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THE GREEK GOSPEL 

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An interpretation of the coming faith 



BY 

EDWARD P. USHER, A.M., LL.B. 



Henceforth I am an old Greek " 

Bishop Phillips Brooks 
Life, Vol. n, 344 



PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

Grafton, Mass., U. S. A. 

1909 



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Copyright, 1909, 
BY Edward P. Usher 



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CONTENTS 





FOREWORD. 




BOOK FIRST. 


FATHER 


— SON — HOLY SPIRIT. 


I. 


Cosmic Force. 


II. 


Life. 


III. 


Animal — Man — Human. 


IV. 


Spirit. 


V. 


Christus. 


VI. 


Christian Symbolism. 


VII. 


The Trinity. 


VIII. 


Jesus as Christus. 



BOOK SECOND. 

MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS. 

I. The Nature of Man. 

II. Knowledge — Wisdom — Truth. 

III. Education. 

IV. Sacrifice and Renunciation. 
V. Self-Reliance. 

VI. Sanity. 
VII. Evil. 

BOOK THIRD. 

RELEASE FROM BURDENS. 

I. Nirvana. 
11. Beauty and Art. 
HI. Immortality. 

BOOK FOURTH. 

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 

I. The Riddle of Existence. 
II. The Mission of Humanity. 



FOREWORD 



In the North American Review for October, 1907, 
there appeared an essay, written on his death-bed 
by a distinguished man of high and pure character, 
seventy-two years of age and dying of a cancer. He 
told clearly and frankly his opinion of the Christian 
religion as commonly and popularly apprehended. He 
entirely repudiated it, declared it incredible that any 
sane, intelligent man could for one moment believe it, 
and wrote with such force that, under all the circum- 
stances, his must be regarded as a very significant 
utterance. It seems never to have occurred to him 
that Christianity might really be something far dif- 
ferent from this conventional system of thought. In 
rejecting that, he seemed to himself to be rejecting 
the entire message of the churches; but in the interest 
of the truth he felt compelled to do it as the result of 
all his reading and meditation. 

Herein there was a singular revelation of his high 
character. In his persistent devotion to every move- 
ment aimed at social progress and the uplifting of the 
race; in his loyalty to truth; in his kindness, forbear- 



8 FOREWORD. 

ance and regard for the welfare of others; in earnest 
seeking after truth and steadfast faith in the verdict 
of his developed consciousness, he disclosed his very- 
self and it was a Christian self. He had tried to lead 
a sane and rational life, had been loyal to the very 
best that he knew and had constantly tried to make the 
world better because of his presence in it. Although 
he rejected what he heard called Christianity he revealed 
in all that he wrote the fact that he had unconsciously 
lived the true Christian life and was indeed a true 
type of Christian character. He had, however, never 
known words to be used in any other than the common 
and popular sense and as thus interpreted he could 
not accept them. 

Now, as a young man, I faced the same dilemma. 
As soon as my consciousness developed to a point 
where it could pass on the subject, I felt that I could 
not accept the conventional propositions and I have 
never altered that opinion. In the forty years that 
have passed, I have constantly meditated about this 
religious problem as being the great enigma. I have 
sought the truth without any desire except to get at 
reahty. To do this, I studied my own consciousness 
and my own experiences. I sought to discover a pro- 
founder meaning in certain words, believing that, if 



FOREWORD. 9 

I could clearly reach the true significance of these 
key-words, it would lead me towards the explanation 
of the life by which I was surrounded and part of 
which I was. 

I observed and studied man as he has been and now 
is, seeking in history and literature the reflected light 
which might illumine the dark places in my own con- 
sciousness. Everything became stimulating, sugges- 
tive and interesting. Having willed to know, I found 
that I had certain feehngs and experiences rising from 
the things I consciously did. About these I thought, 
seeking the explanation of the mysterious fact that 
I could thus will, feel, think and consciously act. I 
came to accept the conception of an immanent God, 
and then working along, step by step, relying always 
on experience and observation, I have reached a solu- 
tion which at least satisfies me. I have reached a 
most intimate sense of the constant presence of God 
as an indwelling force or influence. I am clearly con- 
scious of the presence as power and light of this subtle 
force, which I call spirit. I do not mean to suggest 
or imply any trace of what is commonly called mys- 
ticism, for I do not move towards the disparagement 
but towards the exaltation of the human intellect and 
the human self. I do not discover any ecstatic states, 



10 FOREWORD. 

any incommunicable visions, any overwhelming and 
self -paralyzing conceptions of God. My personality 
is not extinguished, but is expanded and developed. 
I do not give up reason but use it more and more, get 
more and more out of it as a spiritual force that links 
me with God and makes me all that I am. While I 
doubtless realize the same essential experiences as the 
veriest mystic, I give them a different interpretation, — 
see them as a result for which my life has long been a 
preparation; as in part an intuition, in the true mystic 
sense, but as in a greater degree the product of conscious 
mental life. God is indeed immediately present through 
intuition, but this very intuition is essentially intellec- 
tual, that is to say, it involves insight, use of developed 
faculties, and comes as the culmination of many ex- 
periences and reflections. All intellectual insight is 
spiritual, and it leads one to see more and more that 
is divine in the ordinary life functions, to discover 
God and the divine presence in much of the life that 
before had been deemed commonplace. I did not secure 
any positively new life, but I awoke to the divine 
significance that had always been in my life while I 
had been blind to its presence. I awoke to a realizing 
sense of what had always been surrounding me with- 
out recognition from me. I saw how I had been 



FOREWORD. 11 

using divine forces and had been under divine influences 
without knowing it. I merely woke up to the truth 
which had indeed been impUcit in all my daily life 
during all the years. In a word, all has become alive 
and real, so that everything that has any value or 
interest is spiritual. ReHgion seems, indeed, to be 
the secret of the highest form of happy and contented 
living. I am troubled by no doubts or fears, but I 
am intensely interested in trying to apprehend more 
clearly and feel more deeply the spiritual forces that 
environ me, for these seem to be the only realities of 
life. All that makes life most desirable has come to 
center around the words, "God," "Spirit," "Christus," 
and these are all symbolized and connoted by the term 
"Trinity." In the popular meaning of these words I 
do not believe and never have believed since I was 
able to comprehend the matter. If there were no 
other meanings than those so long common and popular, 
I should repudiate them just as our essayist did; but 
instead of stopping at rejection I have labored to 
construct, and this book is the result of my forty years 
in the wilderness. 

I found that there was a group of words each of 
which has not only a conventional and popular mean- 



12 FOREWORD. 

ing, but also a rational significance; that these variant 
meanings constitute two seemingly different interpre- 
tations, two antagonistic systems of thought. The 
rational seems destructive of the common and popular, 
and it truly is, for no one who has ever clearly appre- 
hended the idea on its rational side can ever again use 
the conventional idea as formally true or adequate. 
Yet the two are not essentially antagonistic, for the 
one is the profound explanation of the truth that 
underlies the other. Each is referring to the same 
realities, each derives its practical advantage from 
the same eternal facts, but the rational interpretation 
is so superior that no one who has grasped it can ever 
again rest in the old symbolism and be satisfied with 
the old mysticism. Therefore, whenever a man comes 
to really see the rational truth, he is lost as a champion 
of the old conventional statement of it, and so it is 
said that his old faith has been destroyed. Now it 
truly has, and there is no occasion to deny it, but it all 
means that the old has given way to the new because 
that new is better. The less effective has yielded to 
the more effective, the blind faith has been replaced 
by a clear-eyed faith, superstition has been conquered 
by reason. It is as if impoverished land had been 
enriched so as to yield larger and better results. When 



FOREWORD. 13 

it occurs it is merely a psychical growth or evolution. 
He who has not progressed is unable to discern the 
reasons which have come to the others as a flood of 
light. It is, indeed, all a matter of psychical insight. 
He that hath eyes to see may see, and not otherwise. 
The higher can understand the lower and sympathize 
with all its perplexities, but the lower cannot under- 
stand the higher and so is utterly unable to sympathize 
with it. This is the reason why all genuine progress, 
all true reform and all psychical enlightenment move 
so very slowly. The men who do see can understand 
the plight of those who do not see and so are tolerant 
and sympathetic towards them and their institutions. 
They even help to support institutions, as venerable 
and at the time socially useful, with whose tenets they 
do not and cannot agree. They never ridicule or act 
against any form of religion or any stage of religious 
development and, while they decline many dogmas and 
superstitions, they do so without assailing or denoun- 
cing them in a way to give pain to sincere believers 
in them. They seek to avoid all needless clashing of 
opinion, all futile collision of feeling. Differ as they 
must from others, they seek to be peacemakers, avoiding 
unseasonable allusions and topics which may irritate. 
Far different is the case with those undeveloped 



14 FOREWORD. 

men who do not and cannot see. Unable to under- 
stand the psychical movement, they do not at all per- 
ceive the spiritual significance of what is going on 
before them, and so are intolerant, suspicious and 
inclined to harsh judgments. Gentle and peaceful 
as are the men who see, they become the object of 
deep and unreasonable resentment and often are cruelly 
repressed and persecuted by the men who do not see. 
Thus the men who have the vision are crucified by 
those who are blind. This is the tragedy of man, 
the austere, bitter and mysterious law of his social 
life. The brave souls of each generation suffer for 
the salvation of the multitude. While men are cor- 
rupted and ruined by the selfish machinations of other 
men, they are also saved and lifted up to the higher 
plane of life by the action of their fellows. Thus 
men find in each other both the Devil and the Christus. 
*' Perdition and redemption in and through each other 
is the destiny of man." 

Man always has been, is now and ever will be, in a 
process of psychic evolution. This he cannot avoid 
or escape, for it is the law under which his race lives. 
Life is movement, growth, progress, so that the idea 
of final truth acquired once for all is delusion. There 
are individuals in all stages of this evolution and this 



FOREWORD. 15 

renders the situation at all times extremely complex, 
since, despite these differences, they all meet as members 
of one social body. 

Living in a world in which all ideas conflicting with 
popular systems have been persistently kept out of 
sight, it was many long years before I even came to 
know that these words had or could have another 
meaning than that commonly assigned to them. I 
now see that it is a fact that, side by side, there are 
two great systems of thought, two ways of looking 
at the universe, in which the same word symbols may 
be used because the same essential verities are referred 
to in each case. Each system may properly be called 
Christian, the one in a popular sense, the other in an 
esoteric sense, being variant interpretations resting on 
essential similarity of belief in certain great truths 
which are really universal laws. In all popular usage 
these words must necessarily have their common 
meaning, but the individual may use them in their 
higher sense without regard to how many men agree 
with him. 

In the sense in which I have now come to use the 
term, religion is the single factor that makes this present 
life at all worth while. The irreligious man simply 



16 FOREWORD. 

throws his life away, so that, as far as he is concerned, 
it would have been as well if he had never been born. 
Religion is not a graceful adjunct of life, a social 
decency, something that may be left to await considera- 
tion in convenient times of leisure, that may be taken 
up occasionally in a patronizing way, but, in this high 
sense, it is life itself, for outside the field of animal 
existence there is from this point of view no life that 
is not religious. A being entirely destitute of religion 
would not properly be classified as a man. 

When truly apprehended, Christianity seems to me 
to be the one great achievement of the entire race. 
For its imfolding and development, it has taken all 
history and will take all the future. To understand 
it requires the perception of all man's history as the 
record of a development due to the operation of a 
force that is immanent in himself. This force may 
be delayed and obstructed, but it is essentially invin- 
cible. It is an evolutionary process that links together 
all centuries and connects together all men as parts of 
one great psychical movement, the final achievement 
of which seems to be the one object of all living. 
Aside from this the world would have existed without 
aim, purpose or motive. If the incessant activity 
of man is not finally to create a perfected humanity, 



FOREWORD. 17 

then no reason can be given why all that is should not 
now be blotted out, for all man's activity, outside the 
mere animal plane, is aimed at this, if it is aimed at 
anything. 

The best of the past is the prophetic disclosure of 
all future development. What was said in secret 
shall be proclaimed from the housetop. The ideas 
of the persecuted minority will in time dominate and 
uphft the majority. What is impracticable to-day will 
become practicable in some to-morrow. The vision 
of the seer to-day will be the vital creed of the states- 
man to-morrow. But in all this we go back not to 
the common and popular life of the past, not to the 
ideas that in those early days were widespread and 
apprehended by the masses, but back to the ideas of 
the isolated few, of the serious thinkers, and of the 
reflecting observers despised and rejected by the multi- 
tude. It is back to the frustrated ideals of the race, 
back to the unrealized aspirations, back to those ideas 
that failed in their own day and that still await recog- 
nition. In this way, all the future is locked up in the 
past, is tied to that past, and will merely realize the 
dreams of that past. The so-called reactionaries are 
in error, for they are seeking to return to the common 
ideas of the past while the world has moved beyond 



18 FOREWOKD. 

this and is ever realizing more and more of the hitherto 
frustrated ideals. To go back to the common life of 
the past is unwise and is indeed impossible. We only 
need draw upon the past as if it were a storehouse of 
ideas and aspirations held mostly by men who played 
but a small part in the successful activities of that 
past. They are ideas that seem to have come forth 
before the world was ripe for them and wait to be 
utilized by subsequent generations. They have an 
endless life, for all the future is theirs. So, if we seek 
to discover what will be the great achievements of the 
future in the field of the spirit, we must go back to 
the past and see what have been the ideals of the most 
gifted men. These despised, neglected and rejected 
ideals of the past are to be the realized achievements 
of the future. It is only in this way that we can dis- 
cern what is to come, for it is the dream or vision of 
to-day that becomes the fact of to-morrow. In this 
spirit I have worked for a solution of the great enigma. 
I have tried to discover the best ideas in the long past 
of the race, regardless of the number of men who 
held such ideas, believing that whatever is the best 
will certainly some day come to its reahzation. 

Even the most favored portion of the world is now 
hardly beyond the stage of psychical adolescence. 



FOREWORD. 19 

The world, indeed, has always been and is now, in 
many ways, a very terrible place. There have been 
times when it has seemed like an ill-regulated insane 
asylum. All is crude and immature and, while there 
are indications of great possibilities lying ahead, it is 
only in a very moderate degree that to-day any true 
psychical living is realized, except by a small fraction 
of the most favored communities. The length of the 
historic period needed to reach even this stage may 
well lead us to realize the many generations that must 
come and go before the world can reach any stage 
corresponding to early manhood; but the entire record 
of the race does, when studied as a whole, justify the 
opinion that the greater development will some day 
be reached, whatever chaos and terrible retrogression 
may meanwhile occur. 

Clearly to see all this, to read all that is awful in the 
records of the past, to reaUze the almost inconceivable 
cruelty, corruption and fraud that is and has been 
everywhere present and then, in the face of it all and 
with a clear consciousness of it all, to stand serene, 
declaring and believing that there is a psychical force 
steadily and persistently working out a great purpose 
which is the evolution of a perfected humanity, — this 



20 FOREWORD. 

is the Christian idea in all its simplicity. This is the 
largest and broadest statement of the Christian faith. 
The true Christian is not aiming primarily at the selfish 
purpose of saving his own soul for another sphere of 
existence; but he is seeking to live so as in some measure 
to cooperate, now and here, with the cosmic purpose, 
which is the uplifting of the race. If this faith has 
any intellectual basis, it is found in the careful study 
of the whole history of man, and of this study the 
results seem to me adequate and conclusive. 

The world has as a whole steadily moved on an 
ascending plane. This is an estabhshed fact, for 
history is the record of one great evolution. Super- 
stition must some day lose its hold, even on the masses, 
and the rational ideas must finally triumph. Not in 
our day and not in any time within our ken, but some 
day it must and will come. There is probably no 
single mind now existent greater or more remarkable 
in any way than many minds that gave their message 
and flashed out their Kght thousands of years ago; 
there is probably no psychical sensitivity or receptivity 
anywhere to-day deeper or finer than that always 
present in every preceding century; but the great 
world mind is, as a whole, broader and better, the 
great world consciousness is somewhat deeper, the great 



FOREWORD. 21 

world sensitivity is somewhat finer than in any pre- 
ceding period. The multitude is still, in a very dis- 
couraging degree, just what it always has been, but a 
close study of the past will convince any one that even 
this has moved, and is ever slowly moving, and the 
movement is clearly upward. There has been a constant 
broadening of the common racial mind, a constant 
deepening of the common racial consciousness. Dis- 
couragingly slow as it is, we may feel absolutely certain 
as to its trend, for it is a faith based on a racial experi- 
ence covering a hundred generations. There is about 
it a sort of cosmic slowness, but also a sort of cosmic 
certainty. 

In all the universe, so far as we know, man is the 
only creature that asks a question or seeks to under- 
stand and interpret a fact. He thus stands as the 
sole interpreter of the universe and in seeking, as 
such, to understand himself, he is obliged to turn his 
faculties back upon themselves and try to interpret the 
interpreter. So far as we know, man alone answers 
the questions he himself has asked. He cannot avoid 
this psychical problem or escape from its consideration, 
for it is a series of questions, all of which are connected 
and which really form but one great question that in 



22 FOREWORD. 

some form or other is always appearing and demanding 
attention. It may be framed thus: What do you 
think of yourself; of the race of which you are a mem- 
ber; of the world which is the dwelling-place of your 
race; of the universe of which that world is a part; of 
the Power which is behind that universe? To all this 
man feels that he must find some adequate reply, and 
under a sort of compulsion he has tried through all 
the ages to secure an answer that would leave him in 
peace, freed from the haunting consciousness of failure. 
All the answers he has found seem to arrange them- 
selves in classes or groups, each of which is dominated 
by some central thought, as a sort of key-note, to 
which all the rest of the answer is attuned. In our 
Western civilization there have been two great streams 
of ideas, one of which crystallized, as if frozen, into 
the Latin Theology, while the other is an ever-expand- 
ing system running back to Greek sources. Most men 
find themselves in substantial harmony with the ex- 
planation given by the Latin Church and rest content 
therein, considering the matter as a closed question. 
The reply they thus accept is, they say, final and con- 
clusive. They rest on the common traditions current 
in their special environment, ignoring and ostracising 
all who differ from them. 



FOREWORD. 23 

In a community thus saturated with the Latin ideas 
and traditions, accepting these as final, this volume 
will, for most men, be caviar, for it seeks to express 
the reply to the great enigma given by that type 
of mind which must ever be considered as having 
first appeared in Greece and as having for all these 
centuries derived inspiration from that manifestation 
of the human spirit which characterized the highest 
and best life of the Greeks. The Renaissance was the 
rise of this Greek spirit after nearly a thousand years 
of oblivion. The Reformation was an active protest 
and revolt against further submission to the Latin type 
of mind. All subsequent history describes the march 
of this spirit towards its ultimate ascendancy. 

If we seek to discover exactly what it is that we 
refer to when we use this term ''Greek spirit," we 
shall find that essentially it is the spirit of man as it 
develops under the most favorable social environment. 
It is an historical fact that the disclosure of what the 
spirit in man may become under such conditions was 
first made in Greece. Whenever those conditions have 
again appeared there has been another manifestation 
similar to that which characterized the noblest days 
of Athens. We may therefore designate all this as 
Greek, using that term as a convenient symbol. It is 



24 FOREWORD. 

all due to similarity of environment, for the human 
spirit under hke conditions develops in essentially the 
same way always and everywhere. 

The most marked feature of that classic environment 
was a certain intellectual freedom, resulting in complete 
independence of individual thought, the absence of 
coercion and artificial restraint upon the natural working 
of the mind. These conditions did not long endure, 
but before they passed away there had been such a 
flaming forth of the higher forces hidden in man's 
nature that the race knew its possibilities as never 
before. The inspiration of that marvelous display of 
human genius has never been lost. In some clearly 
traceable way, all subsequent manifestations of the 
same sort have been connected with that classic period 
through its splendid literature and art, which have 
been a source of inspiration urging men on in the 
same path of joyous achievement. 

Hence, to put to a man the query, ''Are you a 
Greek?" would mean: ''Are you an independent 
thinker, free from the coercive power of traditions 
and superstitions, looking at life and its problems with 
the clear, unclouded vision of a free man?" If you 
are such a thinker, you owe it to your environment, 
which has given your nature a free and unimpeded 



FOREWORD. 25 

development, has fed and stimulated your nascent 
powers, has called into activity your potential capacity. 
This environment you owe to your race and to your 
social connection with it, for you have merely let the 
social forces play upon you and, reacting on them 
in a natural and normal way, you have become what 
you are. 

In some degree the Greek thought and spirit secretly 
survived in all the great historic churches. While it 
was entirely lost for most men, it was aUve in the minds 
of a small minority, being a part of the esoteric thought 
of these churches. This minority was the best developed 
^and most favorably environed element, the men of 
broadest and clearest vision. Some were discovered 
and punished, being martyrs to the cause. Most of 
them escaped by silence and by outward conformity, 
which was in itself a type of martyrdom. Thus it 
was for ages secret, concealed, hunted and proscribed, 
and he who held it did so in silence at the risk of his 
life in a so-called Christian church. The revival of 
freedom of thought has gradually relaxed this pressure 
till, to-day, while still esoteric, it is no longer so con- 
cealed, but each generation it creeps a little further 
into the common and popular arena. As freedom of 



26 FOREWORD. 

expression increases, it must in time altogether lose its 
esoteric character. Its undoubted existence in our 
churches to-day is not openly or formally recognized, 
or in terms conceded to exist at all, since it is felt that 
to confess in set phrases the esoteric is to shatter and 
destroy the exoteric, which it is said would at this time 
be unwise. The truth will, it is claimed, reach him 
who earnestly seeks after it, and no other, it is said, 
is worthy of it or can attain unto it. It is not, how- 
ever, at all probable that any man will clearly grasp 
the higher interpretation without at once instinctively 
realizing the value, at this time, to certain minds of 
the conventional statements which continue to exist 
because they really are fitted to such minds. He will 
feel that the exoteric, traditional and popular doctrine 
is in some degree a bulwark of the public peace, and he 
will see to it that the ideas be not ruthlessly destroyed, 
but wisely conserved. Thus the esoteric will safeguard 
the exoteric. 

The number of men interested in this higher inter- 
pretation has always been very small. When we 
consider how scattered and isolated these thinkers 
have been, how unpopular and unremunerative their 
ideas have appeared to be, how bitter the prejudice 



FOREWORD. 27 

against them, growing out of the fear by powerful 
leaders lest the esoteric, weak as it was, should in some 
way imperil the exoteric, strong as it seemed to be, we 
are surprised to find that these ideas have had any 
vitality whatever, that they have not altogether dis- 
appeared. The only explanation is, that to those who 
feel the appeal at all, it comes with an invincible power, 
an irresistible charm. As social conditions become 
easier and education is more widely diffused, this class 
steadily grows and the sense of isolation becomes less 
marked, making the situation of the reflecting man 
less painful. He is constantly finding that it costs 
him less of sacrifice and unpopularity to differ from 
the conventional thought, and this means in time a 
full and frank social recognition. If, indeed, these 
so-called esoteric ideas ever secure a popular hearing, 
their advance will be rapid and their influence upon 
life will be very impressive in the way of social regenera- 
tion. It involves and means no more nor less than the 
entire problem of social progress, for that comes in the 
exact degree that these ideas become prevalent and 
characteristic of the social group. 

That a man has reached this perception is, however, 
no evidence that he can induce his nearest friend to 
give it a moment's consideration, for his friend may 



28 FOREWORD. 

not be sufficiently interested in the general field of 
inquiry, and, indeed, may not be psychically developed 
so as to be able to respond. Or his friend may be so 
encased in prejudice as persistently to repel every 
effort to present the matter. Truth is necessarily self- 
revealing and carries with it when simply and clearly 
stated its own sanctions and convictions. If any 
person is seriously repelled by these pages, it is clear 
that for him they are not valuable and he may disregard 
them as being for him a dead hypothesis. The mind 
takes unto itself only that for which it has an affinity. 
It is not a matter of will but of instant conviction. If 
a person is ready to hear the statement, if his previous 
thinking has led up to it or in its direction, then when 
he meets it he will need no seal of institutional authority 
upon it, for it will come to him with an authority of its 
own. Whatever does not come to a man with this 
force, when by effort he has succeeded in really under- 
standing it, cannot be for that man at that time of any 
true value. To try to grasp it needs an exercise of the 
will, but when it is apprehended, the mind works in its 
own way. It is idle to abuse the ideas of others or to 
try to force any idea upon a man who is not ready for 
it. Discussion is only good so far as it serves more 
perfectly to define and explain what the idea is. 



FOREWORD. 29 

Man's highest conception of life constitutes his re- 
ligion and so there are as many religions as there are 
different theories and conceptions of life and its sur- 
roundings. If it be genuine and vital, religion contains, 
and indeed is, the very quintessence of man's whole life, 
and herein lies its peculiar significance and importance. 
His philosophy or theology is merely his interpretation 
of the universe, and, above all, it involves his conception 
of his own human nature. If the highest ideas any 
individual has actually attained constitute of necessity 
his present religion, then it must remain such until he 
discerns something really nobler. He who is earnestly 
thinking and developing will thus ever be progressing 
towards a truer religion, for he will always be gaining 
power to see what was before concealed from him. He 
will ever be growing in spiritual capacity so that life 
will be a progressive revelation. To accept any theory 
on mere authority as being final is to check his progress 
and arrest his development. It is equivalent to spiritual 
paralysis. His true attitude is always to believe that 
there is something greater and better than he has yet 
attained, and to work to reach this higher vision. The 
highest religion attainable must be capable of statement 
as universally true, regardless of all time and place. It 
must derive its sanction from its inherent excellence 



30 FOREWORD. 

and must never depend on any historical evidence as 
to when or where or by whom it was first stated. Its 
credentials must be found in man's deepest conscious- 
ness. It must be utterly free from superstition and 
involve no magic or miracle. It will necessarily tran- 
scend aU man's knowledge and leave him face to face 
with inscrutable mystery, but it will always be in entire 
harmony with all the verified knowledge he really does 
possess. It will make him realize clearly his limitations, 
but within those limits it will never be repugnant to 
any of the facts disclosed by the use of his highest 
faculties, including his deepest consciousness. 

The day that a man sees clearly the inward value of 
ideas, the day that he sees how rooted they are in the 
very nature of things, he sees how gratuitous it is to 
offer any merely historical foundation as their necessary 
support. Such is the force and vitality of the inward 
thought that to claim that it rests on any proof of 
historical events, except in the largest and broadest 
way, seems an impertinence and, if taken seriously, a 
great peril. No foundation in external events is needed 
for an idea which is sufficiently justified by its intrinsic 
moral value. The failure to see this leads men to 
attribute an entirely false value to institutions and 



FOREWORD. 31 

organizations, to documents certified by mere outward 
authority and to an ecclesiastical discipline which has 
had to be established and maintained by political force. 
Religion rests essentially and ultimately on the con- 
sciousness of man and can never be obliterated so long 
as he survives. All existing institutions may pass 
away, all venerable documents may be discredited and 
cast aside, all special forms of discipline and ritual, 
however consecrated by long usage, may be abandoned, 
and yet religion will survive, because it is essentially 
inherent in the psychical nature of man. Man has 
looked here, has looked there, has clung to every form 
of external support, has obeyed every sort of external 
authority, but has yet to come to a realizing sense of 
the truth, which is that the ultimate basis of religion is 
in his own nature, that the possible Kingdom of God is 
really within himself. He was told this centuries ago, 
but he has never believed it. 

This volume is frankly and unreservedly a presenta- 
tion of esoteric truth. These are the ideas that have 
been privately held by many leaders in all the great 
historic churches. I have only unrolled the record 
and translated the message which gives us Christianity 
as it has been and is held by very many men who live 



32 FOREWORD. 

in the Church on the intellectual plane. It is the reality 
underlying all symbolism and when it is clearly grasped 
it discloses the deep significance of much in our popular 
religion that before had been meaningless if not absurd. 
The moment a man clearly perceives that it is true, he 
sees that it must always have been true and that it can 
never cease to be true; that it is merely the universal 
law of development that always has operated and 
always will operate. 

The ideas in this volume are not mine except by 
direct appropriation and by absorption. I have found 
them scattered through the literature of all races and 
all ages, but most conspicuously in that literature 
which runs back to its sources in Greek philosophy 
and the so-called Greek Theology of the early Christian 
Church. Instead of treating the matter historically, I 
have sought to make a clear and simple exposition or 
interpretation of life from this point of view. I have 
not tried slavishly to reproduce any system of past 
thought or been concerned as to my adherence to its 
form or its details, but have sought to set forth certain 
ideas of a remote past as modified, expanded and 
illumined by the light of all the intervening centuries 
as well as of our own day. I cite no special authority 
for any statement herein made. I use but few quota- 



FOREWORD. 33 

tion marks and do not attempt to give credit, as is 
customary, for ideas as being the peculiar thought of 
the person cited, for I believe that all mind is but one 
mind and that each writer has but expressed this mind 
in his imperfect way. I could properly place a quota- 
tion mark at the beginning and at the end of this book 
to show that it contains no new ideas but that it is one 
long quotation from the literature of humanity. It is 
what I have found that has appealed irresistibly to my 
spiritual consciousness and so is the message of the 
Christus as it has come to me. Does any one call these 
ideas new? It is well. Does any one call them old? 
It is better. The real question is. Are they sound and 
valuable? — and the only appeal to settle this is and 
must ever be to the human consciousness. Nor do I try 
to show by any argument that this line of thought is true, 
but merely seek to show, so far as it is in my power, 
what it really is. I have tried to be purely constructive 
and affirmative, only taking common facts with which 
every man is or may be perfectly familiar and seeking 
to explain and interpret them so as to show that the 
universe is a living manifestation of spiritual force. 

In fact, it seems to me that all I have done is to give 
a very free translation or even paraphrase of certain 
ancient ideas so as to express them in modem form. 



34 FOREWORD. 

That this thought harmonizes with the ideas suggested 
by modern science may be considered as very remarkable. 
Science has, however, brought us no philosophy that 
is essentially new. It has merely given us a vast 
amount of clear and convincing evidence to prove the 
validity of certain very ancient ideas. These have 
been held by reflecting men in all the centuries, but it 
is only in our own day that the abundant proof has 
begun to come in. There is probably not a single so- 
called modern idea that cannot be found in the literature 
of the remote past. It is not the thought of the intel- 
lectual man that has changed or is changing, for that 
has been confirmed and vindicated. It is the popular 
thought, the vague, crude, superstitious notions that 
are beginning to yield to all this evidence so laboriously 
gathered during these recent years. What was felt to 
be true, what reason seemed to say was true, the vision 
of the seer, the conclusions of sensible and reflecting 
men, — all this is merely being illumined by recent inves- 
tigations. Science did not give us the ideas, but it has 
given us the proof and vindication of them. It did not 
reveal the truth, but it is revealing the evidence of the 
truth. 



BOOK FIRST. 



FATHER — SON — HOLY SPIRIT. 



I. Cosmic Force. 

II. Life. 

III. Animal — Man — Human. 

IV. Spirit. 

V. Christus. 

VI. Christian Symbolism. 

VII. The Trinity. 

VIII. Jesus as Christus. 



THE GREEK GOSPEL 



BOOK FIRST. 



COSMIC FORCE. 



Through limitless time, through ages that cannot be 
numbered, was the ETERNAL REASON, the Cosmic Force 
which was GOD, never beginning to be but always 
being, of which the Cosmos has been and is the con- 
tinuous and unbroken manifestation, an eternal going 
forth of the Cosmic Reason into self-expression as 
universal, regulative Law forever fulfilling itself. 

There is one mystery, and only one, which we con- 
cede to be forever beyond our adequate comprehension. 
All that is mysterious in a true sense is connected with 
it and is a part of it. This single mystery we refer to 
by many terms, all having essentially the same meaning 
but involving many different angles of vision. They 
are terms that have regard to the vagueness and sup- 
posed duration, universality and uniqueness of the 
mystery and, except as we desire to emphasize some 
special point of view, they may be used interchangeably. 



38 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Man is always face to face with this mystery, for the 
most impressive fact that confronts him is the Force, 
Energy or Power that is manifested everywhere about 
him and even in him. If he have any capacity for 
perception and reflection he must recognize this as the 
fact that, above all others, imperatively demands to 
be interpreted, — that which he sees everywhere mani- 
fested, that with which he is in constant and unavoidable 
contact, that he himself is. All that has been, all that 
now is and every atom going to make up that all, is 
and ever has been a manifestation of this cosmic force. 
The tiny insect and the entire planetary system are 
alike in this respect. This, with its myriad manifesta- 
tions, is therefore the central fact from whose presence 
man may not go, for it is the environment into which 
he is born and of which, hving or dead, he forms a part. 

It is mysterious and inscrutable. We may study 
its observable manifestations, but that marks our 
limitation, for it is too subtle and elusive to be appre- 
hended, in its essence, by our mind, which is itself but 
one of its innumerable manifestations. Man's mind, 
which is fragmentary, partial and imperfect, cannot 
grasp the totality or absolute nature of such a stupen- 
dous force. We therefore define cosmic reason as the 
force which lies behind all phenomena and concede 
that it transcends all our capacity of true knowledge. 
Despite this, by observing and reflecting during all the 
centuries, man has gathered certain ideas or thoughts 



COSMIC FORCE. 39 

concerning it which seem to aid him to understand, in 
some degree, himself and the universe which Hes about 
him. Confessedly imperfect and inadequate, he feels 
that it is better than no interpretation at all. 

We feel that force must be uncreated and self- 
existent, for, if it were at any time created, that would 
necessitate a preceding creative power, and for such a 
supposition we have absolutely no basis. We cannot 
conceive a time when force was not what it is now. 
We believe that it is constant, indestructible and per- 
sistent in essence, but infinitely varied in mode of 
manifestation. While ever changing in form, it never 
ceases to be capable of further change, in which respect 
it knows no rest, existing as a continuity which knows 
no break. It is that which is needed as, at least, an 
hypothesis which explains all things but which nothing 
can explain. It is that germinative principle which 
manifests itself throughout the universe, but most 
clearly of all in the psychical nature of man. It is 
the principle of unity underlying all differences. In 
inorganic things it appears as a dominating quality, 
in plants as a principle of organization, in animals as 
a principle of sensation and appetite, and in man as a 
rational principle which we believe to be a pure reflex 
of the cosmic reason itself. It is the hidden cause of 
all changes, that which inspires, animates and endows 
all things whatsoever with their respective qualities 



40 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and properties, the stream of tendency by which all 
things have a law of their being and are enabled to 
fulfil it. 

As we contemplate cosmic force, we find that while, 
indeed, it is essentially and truly a unit, it is neverthe- 
less peculiar in that its action involves a trinity. It 
is not one solitary fact, but it involves three correlative 
facts, which, taken all together, appear in action as one 
fact, although we can conceive the three facts as inde- 
pendent of each other. Practically we see and reahze 
only one fact, but a true interpretation of this reveals 
three elements which are necessarily involved, so that 
really to understand force we must conceive this trinity 
as involved in its unity. 

Force itself is the first and chief fact. Now we 
have never known this except in connection with what 
we call matter, which seems to be the vehicle or medium 
of its manifestation. It can apparently only manifest 
itself by thus energizing matter, which is the second 
fact. What matter is in its essence we do not know; 
but it seems clear that there is a something which is 
essentially necessary to the expression or manifestation 
of force, and this elemental something we call matter. 
That there is a reality corresponding to our idea of 
matter and a different reality corresponding to our 
idea of force seems to be directly certified by our con- 
sciousness, and nothing can destroy our feeling that 



COSMIC FORCE. 41 

this IS so. The cleverest skepticism beats in vain 
against this, which comes to us immediately from 
consciousness. 

We can conceive the possibility of force as apart 
from matter or independent of all relation to it; but 
this is merely an intellectual conception, for no man 
ever knew the presence of force except by what it did 
or was doing, and this always involves the presence 
of matter. Always and everywhere matter is being 
energized by force in some of its countless forms or 
manifestations. It appears as motion, activity and 
life acting incessantly and universally in an infinite 
field of ether, which is the third fact. 

These are the three eternal facts, — force, matter and 
ether. The eternal play of force on matter in the ether 
is the universe. We believe that there never was any 
more or less matter than now, never any more or less 
force, never any more or less ether. These three 
changeless and unchangeable elements have been from 
all eternity uncreated, self-existent, indestructible, self- 
governed. This is the elemental trinity — force acting 
on matter and thus constantly revealing and manifest- 
ing itself and all this occurring in the ether and neces- 
sarily dependent on the ether. Neither alone is anything 
but, combined and correlating, the three constitute the 
universe. We may not separate nor divide this trinity. 
Force did not call matter or ether into existence nor 
can it create or destroy a particle of matter nor increase 



42 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

or diminish the ether. Neither preceded the other but 
the three inseparably coexist from eternity to eternity 
without change or variation, as essentially required for 
the existence of all that ever was, is now or ever will be. 

We have never seen and never shall see anything 
that does not involve and necessitate the simultaneous 
presence of these three elements, and yet to us the 
actual impression is unitary. We really perceive the 
force manifestation, and that this depends on matter 
and ether we forget or disregard. It is the force that 
arrests our attention, though to do this it must ener- 
gize matter and must do this in the ether. As a 
trinity it is absolutely complete and yet the various ele- 
ments taken singly would be nugatory and vain. No 
two together would be effective. Force as such, with 
nothing to be energized, would be no more than a 
cipher. So too, matter not acted on by force would 
be inert, dead and useless. The ether alone would be a 
mere vacuum, for, while we may conceive of the ether as 
being all that it is without any force or matter to accom- 
pany it, that is merely because we think of the ether 
as the element in which all else rests and on which all 
transmission of power necessarily depends. To con- 
ceive of the ether as the only element in the universe 
is simply to think such an idea as no universe at all. 

This, then, is what man finds in his study of the 
Eternal Reason, and he calls it God, a unity necessarily 
involving a trinity, self-existent and unfathomable, 



COSMIC FORCE. 43 

that which is behind all phenomena as the adequate and 
efficient cause thereof. In a word, God is the term 
by which we designate that exhaustless, universal force 
that eternally goes forth into manifestation of itself 
according to its own fixed and immutable laws, the 
universe being the sum of these diverse manifestations. 

We cannot conceive of such a force as having body, 
parts or passions. Nor can we think of it as in any 
way or degree limited to what we popularly call per- 
sonality. Of it we can form no mental image at all. 
When we try to do so we at once begin to anthropomor- 
phize in a way that tends to destroy the very idea itself. 
We are baffled in our attempt to find language that 
shall fit the conception that lies clearly enough in our 
mind. We can only regard it as a mystery too deep 
for us to touch more than its outer edges. It is truly 
beyond our capacity, for there is nothing of which we 
have true knowledge that is like unto it. It exists 
alone of its kind. But if personality essentially means 
power to manifest certain qualities, God is then all 
personal, for the term designates that force which 
alone is capable of universal and continuous manifes- 
tation. God is the personality whose expression is the 
whole universe, which is therefore not a machine, but 
an organism with an indwelUng principle of life which 
we call God. 

Each man has in himself that which illustrates this 
idea. He is conscious that he is an indivisible, living 



44 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

unit. It is not his eye that sees, his foot that walks, 
his hmb that feels pain, his mind that thinks, but it is 
he that sees, he that is conscious of pain, he that thinks. 
Now this subtle force that pervades and dominates his 
body, whereby he has self-consciousness, is no part of 
his body. When he is dead every particle of matter 
that has constituted his living body is still there and 
still continues to be acted on by multitudinous forces, 
yet the peculiar capacity that made him what he was 
is gone. The master has left the house, the engineer 
has left the throttle, the matter that has been ruled 
has lost its ruler and lies inert. But while it loses 
this it remains the seat of certain other active forces, 
which proceed to transform and destroy its organic 
unity and obliterate its identity until it goes back to 
elemental gases and characterless dust. Thus he knows 
that, whether he be living or dead, his body is the seat 
of ceaseless activity. There is something at work all 
the time, and to this he knows that he owes his very 
existence and growth. All these forces he calls mani- 
festations of God, and because of them he lives and 
develops into a conscious individual. He applies this 
same idea to the universe and says that what is true of 
him is in some sense true of all things. Now, action 
is a mode of being, and so a man is wherever he feels 
or acts. This must be true; for to say that one could 
feel or act where one is not is to say that one can be 
where he is not, which is a contradiction. The ego is,. 



COSMIC FORCE. 45 

therefore, no one part of the body, and yet it is in 
every part which acts or is sentient. I cannot com- 
prehend how this is so, but I know from my conscious- 
ness that it is so, and I know that this ego is not any 
particle of my body. This ego which thinks, wills 
and acts is essentially an invisible and unfathomable 
force, but it is to me a fact beyond all other facts, a 
reality of the highest and truest type. This relation 
which a man knows to exist between his body and 
that force constituting his individual self he may con- 
ceive as existing between God and the whole universe, 
and all this we express when we say that God is immanent 
in the universe as the adequate explanation of its 
existence and maintenance. 

What does a man really know about the nature of 
that which constitutes his own will or personality ? — 
and yet of its existence as a fact he is immediately and 
distinctly conscious. Limited in range as is his power 
of self-manifestation, he cannot in the least fathom or 
analyze that which is at the root of it. How can he 
then expect ever to comprehend the nature of such a 
stupendous fact as a personality that has universal 
power of manifestation with an infinite and eternal 
field of operation? 

However difficult it may be to comprehend such an 
idea, or even to conceive how it can possibly be true, 
it would seem that we are forced to conceive what we 
call Being, or something analogous to what we vaguely 



46 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

designate by that term, as back of all the phenomena 
of intelligence. Mind or intelligence we define as a 
force that makes possible the selection, guidance and 
control of means for the accomplishment of a certain 
end, necessarily implying knowledge of the end sought, 
perception of what means are adapted to reach that 
end, and power to guide and control those means. 
Now it is idle to speak of selection if no one selects, 
or of guidance and control if no one exercises those 
functions. If we find intelligence manifested univer- 
sally, then certainly there is back of all this intelligent 
action an intelligence as extensive as the action and 
as perfect as the results everywhere disclosed. Back 
of universal intelligence must be universal Being, and 
this must have consciousness fully and perfectly where 
we have it partially and under limitations. It must 
have power in every way that we have it, only it must 
be in perfect manner and degree. While we seem to 
be necessarily dependent upon a physical organism and 
cannot comprehend how these powers can exist apart 
from such connection with matter, we seem to be forced 
to conceive as possible an independent and absolute 
existence that is purely psychical, eternally using 
matter, but not in any way dependent on it for con- 
tinued existence. It is to be vaguely conceived as a 
universal force revealing itself as intelligence, and it 
is this that is manifested whenever intelligent action 
is anywhere disclosed in any form or any degree 



COSMIC FORCE. 47 

whatsoever. The cosmos is, therefore, a self-exis- 
tent organism, animated by indwelhng reason — the 
eternal expression of a thinking faculty essentially the 
same as our own. The universe was not made or 
created, but has always existed and always will exist, 
flowing necessarily from the three eternal facts of 
force, matter and the ether. Nothing was ever 
created or made in the popular sense of those words, 
for what we call creation is not an historical event, 
but it is a perpetual process, an endless chain of events, 
an eternal evolutionary process in which all present 
things are connected with things immediately past 
and those with things remotely past, so continuing 
without ever reaching any beginning, for always there 
was the eternal, elemental trinity. Always there was 
God, and this is the stupendous mystery that comes 
before the mind of man when he seeks to understand 
the force that surrounds him. He finds that he him- 
self, on his psychical side, is a part of that cosmic 
force which never began and will never end, and he 
says that this is God, eternally going forth into self- 
expression as universal, regulative law forever ful- 
filling itself. 



II. 

LIFE. 

God, regarded as eternal and universal activity, 
energy or power, constitutes what we must call Life, 
pervading all creatures and things. The universe thus 
becomes alive in all its myriad parts. Life is multi- 
farious and appears in endless varieties, for, in every 
case, its presence is that which makes and keeps the 
thing or creature what it is. Its presence energizes 
and individualizes matter, giving to it whatever charac- 
ter or quality it possesses. All individuation, therefore, 
presupposes life, or the presence of force, the loss of 
which causes death, which is merely due to the absence 
of such force. 

The term " Ufe " is susceptible of a great deal more of 
meaning than is ordinarily assigned to it. Its use in 
the common, restricted sense leads to a very inadequate, 
if not false, interpretation of natural phenomena, for 
we then regard as dead what is truly alive. We must 
begin by taking the broadest sense and considering Ufe 
in its widest and profoundest meaning. We then come 
to realize that it is the presence of force, working under 
definite laws, causing a certain portion of matter to 
have a character or quahty of its own. Everything 
having distinctive qualities has therefore Hfe, whose 
presence is the cause of those qualities, which persist 



LIFE. 49 

SO long only as life continues to be present. Life is 
therefore present wherever cosmic force is active, and 
the forms or modes of life are as varied and numerous 
as are the manifestations of the force. Every quaUty 
of matter being a manifestation of force, it follows 
that any substance involves as many manifestations as 
it possesses qualities. The stream of tendency, which 
causes a thing to be what it is, is thus the stream 
called the life of that thing. Life is therefore the 
presence of God. 

We must not, however, conceive this force as a sort 
of special entity, existing in the thing but separate 
from it, and able to effect changes beyond what are 
caused by what we call physical, chemical and psychical 
forces, for all phenomena can be accounted for without 
going beyond those bounds. It is rather for us to see 
that these forces are the life, and that the so-called 
quaUties are really modes of being, so that every sub- 
stance is as many modes of being as it has distinct 
qualities, all of which form an harmonious unit, which 
is the substance or thing as known to us. 

If we seek to classify these diverse forms of life or 
modes of being, we find the broadest field to be what 
we call inorganic life. We next find a field which we 
call organic, subdivided into the two fields of plants 
and animals. The animal field subdivides into the 
physical and the psychical. 



50 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Life in the inorganic field is elementary, fundamen- 
tal, uniform, most simple and relatively stable, while 
organic life is complex, manifold, highly complicated 
and unstable. The totahty of life in all these forms 
we call the universal life, of which the spiritual life in 
the human being is the highest and culminating form. 
The organic life evolved from the preceding inorganic 
life of the universe, all taken together forming one 
great and uninterrupted continuity. 

To understand the true significance of the term, we 
must therefore absolutely rid ourselves of the idea that 
it necessarily implies that the thing said to have life 
is animated as we are. Our consciousness pertains to 
our type of life and that is all. In popular speech we 
use the terms ^' dead '^ and " alive " with reference to all 
sorts of inorganic substances as well as of forms of or- 
ganic life which lack consciousness. How often we hear 
it said that a man killed a tree, that it died at its roots, 
that it bled to death from cutting off the branches at 
the wrong time! When we say that the air of a room 
is dead, we merely mean that it lacks those qualities 
which should properly belong to it so that a quickening 
impulse might be got by breathing it. So, too, we say 
that stagnant water is dead and we speak of a body of 
water as the Dead Sea, when we mean that the water 
has ceased to have those qualities which normally 
belong to it. 



LIFE. 51 

Consider what a revelation of life is made in the 
field of metals — what a clear individuality is disclosed 
in gold, silver, copper, iron and tin. All are manifesta- 
tions of cohesion and other general properties, but how 
peculiar is each, how distinctly the individuality of 
each stands out! Metals disclose diseases in a very 
varied manner, knowledge of which has of late pro- 
gressed rapidly. Many show symptoms of poisoning, 
rendering them unfit for use. These diseases may be 
cured by proper treatment and in some cases cure 
themselves in time without expert assistance. In fact, 
a microscopic pathology of metals has been developed 
similar to that existing for the diseases of men. Both 
branches of science resort to the same means in attain- 
ing their ends. The crystalline structure of metals 
observed by the microscope reminds us of the tiny 
cells which make up the texture of plants. This struc- 
ture is by no means rigid and unchangeable, but, on 
the contrary, it is astonishing how much life is under 
certain circumstances displayed in a piece of copper 
or iron. Under the microscope, multifarious changes 
appear, disclosing genuine life processes. 

Then, again, what a disclosure of life is made in the 
field of rocks and minerals, and how clearly the dis- 
integrating, crumbling rock proclaims its death, the 
departure of the force that made and kept it what it 
was! What a disclosure of life is made in the field of 
crystals, how varied and yet how unique, how beau- 



52 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

tiful and how distinct, the multitudinous individualities 
that are revealed! A crystal will replace a corner or 
side or any defacement so as to complete its symmetry 
before it will begin to grow elsewhere, and this will 
happen when the crystal has been incomplete for mil- 
lions of years, as has sometimes been found in the case 
of geological specimens. Study the plume-like forms 
assumed by water when crystallized. The similarity 
it presents to vegetable forms is very striking. One 
may often see on frosty window-panes fantastic imi- 
tations of organic things which forcibly suggest vital 
power. 

Consider ductiUty, malleabiUty, flexibiUty, elasticity 
and brittleness. How commonplace we regard these 
qualities, and yet who can fathom that law which 
enables them to be present or absent in a substance? 
Consider the so-called forces of attraction, — gravity, 
cohesion and chemical affinity. Who pretends to under- 
stand them, and yet who fails to perceive their universal 
and continuous presence? Cohesive attraction is, indeed, 
the organizing or structure-making principle in organic 
life, disclosing the law of symmetry. It operates as if 
it were a true living force. 

Each form of Kfe depends for its existence and its 
continuance upon the maintenance of all the forms 
that are below it in the scale. Thus the animal is only 
possible when he can feed upon the less complex forms 



LIFE. 53 

called vegetables or plants. The herbivorous animals 
feed upon vegetable fiber and transform this into a 
more highly nitrogenous product, which is necessary 
for the sustenance of the carnivorous animals. The 
plant, as its life work, decomposes the carbonic acid 
of the air, assimilates the carbon and hydrogen, decom- 
poses the water which trickles about its roots through 
the soil, and does this by energy which it receives from 
the sunbeams. A successful plant or vegetable neces- 
sarily presupposes the whole solar system as a condition 
precedent to its being what it is. Its life presupposes 
every Hnk that precedes it in the chain of life. There 
is also a very remarkable adjustment tending to 
maintain atmospheric conditions seen in the recip- 
rocal action of the two branches of organic life, since 
animals consume oxygen and give off carbonic acid, 
while plants consume carbonic acid and set oxygen 
free. 

Thus all tends to show unity and harmony of idea. 
Inorganic life leads up to and furnishes food for the 
plants, the lowest form of organic Ufe, which again 
furnish food for a higher form of organic Hfe in the 
herbivorous animals, who again furnish food for the 
carnivorous animals, and ail the time plants and animals 
reciprocally work towards atmospheric conditions favor- 
able to each. Then the animal, having been fed and 
sustained by plant product, dies, separates into his 
constituent chemical elements and goes back to nourish 



54 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and promote plant life, thus completing the cycle, — 
from dust back to dust, or from the inorganic back 
to the same. 

It is impossible not to feel that these apparently 
diverse forces are all one force when they thus knit 
together as necessary elements in one great progressive 
development. Now if we call this force life at any 
stage, then we must call it life at every stage, for we 
are as sure that all life came from preceding life as we 
are that not anything was ever created or evolved out 
of nothing. 

There certainly must have been a time when there 
was no organic life upon this globe. When the condi- 
tions became proper therefor, the most complex forms 
of inorganic life developed into the least specialized 
forms of organic life and that evolution began which 
has given us our present status. The more complex 
plants and animals are the slowly modified descendants 
of less complex plants and animals under agencies 
which are daily seen in operation about us. The entire 
development has steadily moved from simplicity to 
complexity, from uniformity to variety, evolving from 
masses of uniform and simple jelly-like substance more 
than two million species of plants and animals such 
as naturalists classify. 

Organic Hfe began with what we call protoplasm, 
out of which all plants and animals are formed. It 
consists of many atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen 



LIFE. 55 

and nitrogen with a small number of atoms of sulphur 
and phosphorus. It is as structureless as jelly or as 
the albumen of an egg, and yet every minute portion 
of this possesses all the distinctive and fundamental 
properties that are to be seen in the most complicated 
living structures. It has power to assimilate food and 
so to grow. It has power of motion, power to multiply 
itself, and sensitivity. 

Now, it is said, how can this protoplasm disclose 
this form of life, which was not manifested in even the 
slightest degree by any of its constituent substances? 
We do not know and it is not probable that man ever 
will know, but we believe that the qualities and proper- 
ties of protoplasm are expressions of various move- 
ments, chemical and physical, and belong to it simply 
as a chemical substance. We do not doubt but that 
chemists will in time be able to form the substance, and 
that it will when formed possess all the usual properties, 
including what is called its life. That we do not see 
how or why all this does or can happen is not at all 
strange, for we do not know, in any case whatever, 
why a chemical synthesis results in such a display of 
qualities not manifested by the constituent elements 
until properly combined. 

Thus take sugar, starch and alcohol. Each is made 
up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and yet with what 
entirely different results! All this, so far as analysis 
discloses, is apparently due merely to the different 



56 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

proportions of the different elements. Each^ however, 
manifests a law of combination which may be both 
physical and chemical and discloses three forms of life, 
or modes of being, which come to us as these three sub- 
stances. Or consider this case: We have a gas called 
chlorin which is excessively irritating and suffocating^ 
so that any attempt to breathe the undiluted gas would 
undoubtedly prove fatal. We also have an element 
called sodium which, when freshly cut, has the brilliant 
metallic luster of silver. This sodium takes fire when 
thrown into warm water and, to be kept, it must be 
under naphtha in a tightly closed bottle, for it cannot 
exist in contact with either air or water. The union 
of this gas and this silvery metal becomes table salt. 
Here is the union of two destructive and poisonous 
substances to create one of the most necessary articles 
of our daily life. 

Take common sand from the seaside beach, add to 
it chalk, ordinary wood-ashes or ashes of sea plants 
and by the application of heat secure glass. Was 
there anything at all like the product in any of its 
constituent elements? Could you have foretold this 
result prior to its realization as a fact? 

If there is one fact of which we are all certain, it is 
that water is a result of the union of two gases, hydro- 
gen and oxygen. Is it possible to conceive of a product 
more completely different from the elements of which 
it is composed than we find in this case? Can we explain 



LIFE. 57 

in any way this chemical synthesis? This water is the 
great and natural antagonist of fire, and yet it consists 
of nothing but two gases, one of which is the most 
inflammable of all substances, while the other is the 
great cause and agent of all combustion. This is a 
fact which may well give us a high estimate of the 
mystery involved in the transforming power of chemical 
combination. That the complex protoplasm has its 
peculiar properties is no stranger than these cases 
cited. Every chemical synthesis manifests a new 
set of properties, and to this protoplasm forms no 
exception. 

We find certain organisms which are mere shreds of 
protoplasm, not definable as either vegetable or animal, 
but constituting a sort of indefinite borderland between 
inorganic and organic life. Organic life from the begin- 
ning is an evolution towards the development of con- 
sciousness. In the vegetable realm all the energy or 
life is devoted to the mere conversion of inorganic 
matter into organic forms which become food, permit- 
ting the rise of animal life. The animal type finds 
thus its food prepared and ready made by the processes 
of vegetation, and hence is able to apply itself to the 
development of a nervous system and a brain as organs 
of a conscious mind. What vegetable life produces, 
animal life consumes, and from the lowest animal up 
to man we witness a constantly rising development 
of nervous structure and consciousness. 



58 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

''All this involves a vast cycle of operations, as to 
the unity of which we cannot be mistaken, for it is a 
cycle obviously depending on adjustments among all 
the forces both of solar and terrestrial physics, and 
every part of this vast series of adjustments must be 
in continuous and unbroken correlation with all the 
rest. A very few elementary substances enter into 
untold variety of combinations, producing an harmo- 
nious network of results which can only be attained 
by a system of mutual adjustments as immense as the 
variety it produces, as minute as the differences on 
which it depends, and as centralized in direction as 
the order and harmony that it all produces. In the 
process of crystallization we may see the particles of 
matter rushing under the impulses of invisible forces to 
take their appointed places in the form which to them is 
a law. These particles pass from one molecular condition 
to another until a structure is built by an unseen con- 
structive agency, and many of these structures are 
singularly complex, beautiful and individual. In the 
development of seeds and eggs the particles may be 
traced, moving from conditions of almost complete 
simplicity to other conditions of inconceivable com- 
plexity. In the mysterious nucleated cell the work 
may be seen in actual operation. From elements, 
which under all our means of investigation appear to 
be absolutely the same, molecules of protoplasm are 
built up into seaweed, a tree, an insect, a fish, a reptile. 



LIFE. 59 

a bird or a man. The molecules seem to obey, but it 
cannot be any mere wayward or capricious order, for 
the formative energy seems to be as much under com- 
mand as the molecules themselves.'' 

It is all a spectacle of law appearing as life, seeming 
to subordinate all molecules to similar aims and similar 
principles of action, producing by reciprocal adjustment 
one harmonious whole. Thus Hfe is not a result or 
consequence, flowing as a sort of necessary quality or 
attribute from certain molecular arrangements of matter, 
but it is that present energy or force which causes the 
special molecular arrangements to appear. It is the 
presence of this life force that enables everything to 
come into existence, to continue in existence, to grow 
and develop. It thus precedes, fashions, builds up, 
maintains and carries to a climax each special molecular 
aggregate. This appears as a steady, continuous growth, 
as the unfolding or evolution of a mysterious potency. 
When life has expended itself to the maximum per- 
mitted by the special molecular combinations, it seems 
to depart as from an exhausted field, and its with- 
drawal we designate as death. Accident, abuse or 
disease may destroy the field of activity long before 
life has made the full use of the organism which might 
have been possible under normal conditions. Life then 
seems to have been defeated, as it were, in its effort 
to reach in that instance fulness of expression, and 
this defeat it seems to have no power to prevent. It 



60 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

seems to be an endless seeking for opportunity to express 
itself, being constantly defeated and thwarted, but 
being always persistent, inexhaustible and essentially 
invincible. 

The world about us presents the spectacle of limit- 
less energy going forth into expression. The force 
seems to seize every possible opportunity and to utilize 
it to the maximum degree. Everything whatsoever 
is essentially a group or combination of conditions 
adapted to give rise to or render possible this expres- 
sion of the force we call life. One combination, when 
utilized, seems to give rise to a new combination and 
sometimes to several, into which the force seems to 
rush as an unbroken and uninterrupted stream or flood, 
pouring through every possible outlet. When all con- 
ditions are right in the spring, the stream flows into 
the tree that has stood for many months as if it were 
dead, and at once it becomes the seat of a marvelous 
activity. Every available chance for a leaf, a blossom 
or a bud is seized and we have before us a mass of 
beauty created with the utmost profusion. 

It seems not to matter at all whether these blossoms 
ever prove effective and go on to fruitage. The maxi- 
mum capacity to blossom is used and later on the 
maximum power to bear fruit, but the leaves and 
the blossoms come, so far as conditions permit, regard- 
less of all subsequent circumstances, that may render 



LIFE. 61 

every leaf and blossom nugatory and vain. It seems 
as if instantaneously every chance were used, as if the 
force were incessantly seeking expression. Upon this 
fact we constantly rely, and we are never disappointed. 

It seems, indeed, as if there were a vast reservoir of 
force, and all we have to do, or can do, is to use our 
intelligence to give it such outlet as may render it most 
useful for all our varied purposes. The force is inex- 
haustible. If we can raise one ton of corn we know 
that we can raise a billion tons if we will but multiply 
those conditions which we found successful in producing 
the single ton. But except as these suitable conditions 
exist, force seems powerless to express itself, and so, 
from our point of view, it seems in countless ways to 
be thwarted, baffled, limited and even defeated. We 
cut down the tree, tear up the roots, destroy whole 
forests, denuding vast sections of country but, if any- 
where there are left any vital conditions, up comes the 
green shoot and receives the maximum development 
that circumstances permit. 

We find trees in every conceivable state from the 
stunted, aborted dwarf to the most majestic and tower- 
ing giants, from the tree that has a few worthless and 
shriveled indications of what might have been fruit 
to the tree whose branches are almost breaking with 
luscious fruitage that delights both eye and taste. The 
tree that represents years of development we find 
attacked by insects, slugs, worms and countless para- 



62 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

sites which sometimes destroy it, sometimes merely 
impair its beauty and at times infect and spoil all the 
fruit that had given brilliant promise of success. This 
indicates the law which characterizes all force, so that 
we might expect that the force which we find in man 
as his distinctive possession and which we call psychical, 
would reveal the same salient features. 

In the case of a tree, what we have is essentially a 
structure which furnishes certain conditions which, 
when set in a proper environment, react thereon and 
yield certain results. A change in structure or in the 
environment is enough to vary all the results. The 
more we study man and discern the problems of his 
life, the more clearly we seem to see that his mentality 
and spirituality primarily rest on his possession of a 
suitable organic structure which may become a medium 
for the expression of spirit. He has a sensitivity which 
enables him to react on his environment, and a change 
in either of these elements will produce the most 
marked difference in his character, his capacity and 
mental attributes. 

Man is merely a group of multitudinous conditions 
which render possible certain pecuhar force manifesta- 
tions. Between all these conditions there may be 
harmonious adjustment or not, and there are seemingly 
countless degrees in which this harmony may or may 
not exist, but the status of the organism determines 
all the possibilities of expression. Organic life has 



LIFE. 63 

always evolved towards greater complexity, and this 
leads to unstable conditions. The number of possible 
combinations, in the case of man, seem to be beyond 
calculation, for he involves so many conditions which 
require coordination and adjustment that the slightest 
disarrangement may throw all into confusion. At so 
many points he may either be normal or deficient or 
excessive that no two men are exactly alike, and the 
difference between them may be as great as is repre- 
sented by idiocy on the one hand and brilliant genius 
on the other. The play of forces in the psychical field 
is the same as it is in every other field, but with the 
added element that man has power to complicate the 
problem and to alter conditions, modifying the original 
organism in countless ways. The organic structure, in 
any individual case, has become what it is as the result 
of absolutely innumerable factors stretching over a 
long period, and possibly involving individual activity 
as a finally controlling factor; and this influence of the 
individual may reach ahead into subsequent genera- 
tions so as to diminish or increase the effective capacity 
of many others besides himself. 

But to whatever special causes organic qualities may 
be due, force can only use that organism which is 
adapted to its purposes, and whether it is so adapted 
or not is always a matter of fact which is unalterable. 
If a man is born with so defective an organism that 
no knowledge or thought is possible, we call him a fool 



64 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

or an idiot. Something is wrong and the force called 
spirit cannot use the structure. The subtle telephonic 
messages cannot be transmitted, for there is no sen- 
sitivity, no receptivity, no response. He is out of the 
circuit and has no relation whatever to things psychical. 
If by accident or misadventure the structure, which 
was originally adapted for service, is injured so as to 
be no longer an effective medium, it is then merely a 
case of the man's being practically reduced to what 
we have called idiocy, which essentially is absence of 
mental capacity. The idiot may have all the external 
semblance of man, but he is like the tree that, while 
it may be alive and may have a certain sort of growth, 
yet is sterile, barren and worthless because the vital 
energy for some reason cannot effectively use its defec- 
tive structure, and possibly this may be because of 
trouble out of sight at the roots. From the idiot who 
cannot be used at all in a psychical way we trace, step 
by step through all conceivable gradations, up to genius, 
which furnishes the maximum opportunity for such 
expression. 

We do not, however, need to reach man or even the 
higher animals to find the most amazing evidence of 
what is possible as a manifestation of the cosmic force 
called life. Certain fishes, notably the Gymnotus and 
the Torpedo, demonstrate the fact that somewhere there 
was knowledge of the theory and working of the voltaic 



LIFE. 65 

pile as constituting an electric battery ages before any 
man ever knew the very slightest fact about electricity. 
The fish is provided with a battery closely resembling 
what man now produces. In this battery there are 
nearly a thousand hexagonal columns, and each of these 
is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates which 
appear to be analogous to the plates of a voltaic pile. 
There is a large supply of nervous matter which 
spreads out in a multitude of thread-like filaments round 
the columns so as finally to reach and pass into every 
one of the cells. This structure discloses a complete 
knowledge of certain mysteries which, in these later 
days, have been discovered and utilized by men. 

If one of the Annelida is cut in two by a cross-section, 
each of the severed parts grows into a perfect animal 
again, reconstructing a head with its proper appendages 
for the lower half, and a tail with its proper adjuncts 
for the upper one. From each of the cut ends a tiny 
drop of protoplasm exudes, which is quickly and deftly 
molded in each case into such prolongations of the 
alimentary canal, the blood-vessels and nerves as are 
needed respectively, several organs in one of the recon- 
structed moieties having nothing analogous to them in 
the other. Similarly, a spider or lobster or lizard will 
grow a new leg or tail or claw to replace one lost in any 
way. A snail will reproduce an amputated '^hom" or 
tentacle many times in succession, securing in each 
case the eye with its lens and retina. 



66 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

The bee constructs its marvelous geometric cell, the 
spider invents and spins from its own bowels its ingen- 
ious trap for flies, the oriole weaves its curious pendent 
nest without any instruction, with no guiding pattern 
or example, and before any possible opportunity for 
observation and experiment. The creature never hesi- 
tates or wavers, takes no time for deliberation, but 
effects instantly the necessary combination of numerous 
and far-reaching means, and it makes no mistakes. If 
you carry away blindfold certain pigeons, the honey- 
bee or even certain animals, to a distance of many 
miles by a route they have never traversed, instantly, 
on being set free, they are able to return to their old 
homes. A species of wasp stores up food of a kind 
which it never uses for itself, and carefully deposits it 
in a proper receptacle, which is not its own abode, for 
the use of its young whose birth it will not live to wit- 
ness. There are birds that, from the moment they are 
hatched, feed and care for themselves, running, flying 
and roosting on trees as if the world, on which they 
have just opened their eyes, had been long famihar to 
them. There is a certain insect which deposits its eggs 
in the tissue of a young bud. She first carefully ex- 
amines the bud on all sides, feeling it with her legs and 
antennae. Then she slowly inserts her long ovipositor 
between the closely rolled leaves of the bud; but, if it 
does not reach exactly the right spot, she will withdraw 
and reinsert it many times until at length, when the 



LIFE. 67 

proper place has been found, she will slowly bore deep 
into the very center of the bud, so that the eggs will 
reach the exact spot where alone the necessary condi- 
tions for development exist. The insect acts as if it 
had foresight involving precise knowledge of what the 
eggs needed, and yet it could have had no experience 
in such matters, could have gained no knowledge by 
observation, and certainly could have had no material 
as a basis for reflection even if it had the power to 
observe and reflect. 

A plant, called the Flytrap of Venus, is worthy of 
careful consideration. The edge of the leaf is over- 
grown with strong bristles, while its surface is covered 
with small glands, at either side of which are three 
long hairs. If a fly approaches, carelessly settles on 
the leaf and touches one of the six long hairs, the leaf 
suddenly folds, the bristles interlace and the insect is 
caught. The sensitive hairs have done their duty, and 
now begins the work of the glands. These discharge 
a large quantity of a colorless acid, which is a digestive 
fluid, and the closed leaf thus becomes a stomach. 
After the lapse of nine days or so the leaf reopens and 
the insect is found to have disappeared. Now if a 
non-edible object, as, for instance, a stone or piece of 
wood, irritates the hairs the leaf closes as before, but 
soon discovers its mistake and does not discharge the 
digestive juice; but after one day it again unfolds and 
is ready for another capture. 



68 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

We find definite evidence of the power of discrimi- 
native selection even lower down in the scale of life 
than the cellular plants, for we find it even among the 
protoplasmic organisms. Certain minute particles of 
living jelly, having no visible differentiation of organs, 
build up shells or casings of the most regular geometri- 
cal symmetry of form and of the most artificial con- 
struction. From the same sandy bottom one species 
picks up the coarser quartz grains, cements them 
together with a cement which must be secreted from 
its own substance, and thus constructs a fiask-shaped 
shell having a short neck and a single large orifice. 
Another species picks up the finer grains and puts 
them together with the same cement into perfectly 
spherical shells of the most extraordinary finish, per- 
forated with numerous small tubes disposed at rather 
regular intervals. Another species selects the minutest 
sand-grains and the terminal points of sponge-spicules 
and works these up, apparently with no cement at all 
but by the mere ''laying'' of the spicules, into perfect 
spheres like homeopathic globules, each having a 
single fissured orifice. The larva of the caddis-fly 
lives in water and constructs for itself a tubular case 
made of various particles glued together. If, during 
its construction, this case is found to be getting too 
heavy, a piece of leaf or straw is selected to be added 
to the structure; and conversely, if the latter is found 
to be getting too light so as to show a tendency to float, 
a small stone is morticed in to serve as ballast. 



LIFE. 69 

Consider the metamorphosis of insects. A creature 
which to all appearance is fully formed and which has 
led a separate and independent existence suddenly lays 
itself to sleep. In that condition, without food, without 
any contact with any directing physical agency external 
to itself, the organization is wholly altered. Its whole 
body is rearranged, its old members dissolve and dis- 
appear, while new members emerge and in a few days 
or weeks are perfected in form and power. Moreover, 
that form and that power are both for uses w^hich, so 
far as the creature's previous experience is concerned, 
are absolutely new. ^ 

In the white of an egg there is no structure that can 
be detected by any human method of examination, 
and yet out of that material, by the application of 
nothing beyond a little heat, a most elaborate structure 
is developed along lines of growth which are rigorously 
predetermined. How this can be so is in the highest 
degree inconceivable, and it is only familiarity and 
thoughtlessness that prevent our realizing how myste- 
rious it all is. 

We say that the spiritual life in man is a great mys- 
tery, and it truly is, but then all life is a great mystery. 
The manifestation of force as cohesion, gravity and 
chemical affinity is just as great a mystery, since it is 
insoluble. If we cannot in the least degree understand 
any of the forms of life, we cannot properly say that 
one is more mysterious, for each reaches the maximum 



70 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

SO far as we are concerned; all we can say is that they 
are alike mysterious and beyond our powers of compre- 
hension. Man is not essentially more mysterious than 
a diamond^ but the qualities manifested by a diamond 
are few in number and very limited in range, while man 
exhibits more qualities or sorts of force than any other 
thing or creature. It is, indeed, strictly true that no 
thing and no creature manifests all the qualities that 
man does, for he displays all the fundamental qualities 
seen in other things and creatures, and also those peculiar 
to himself. This is the solid basis of his preeminence. 

To summarize our thought, we may say that God is 
that constitutive, sustaining, animating force which 
enables everything whatsoever to be what it is. If 
there were in the universe only inorganic forms of life, 
all that would be manifested would be such forms of 
energy as gravity, cohesion, chemical affinity, heat, 
electricity and magnetism. In the graduated orders 
of organic life a great development is disclosed, for 
force appears in myriad vegetables, fishes, insects and 
animals, and thus life takes on a surprisingly new sig- 
nificance. In man the force is still further disclosed 
as conscious reflection, thought and self-determining 
character. From first to last, from the base of the 
pyramid to its apex, from the lowest to the highest 
forms, it is all one great harmonious, interacting unity, 
reflecting Life as a universal fact. 



III. 

ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 

Having considered life in its broader meaning, 
we now come to that type which man represents. If 
analyzed as purely physical, he consists of a few of the 
elementary substances common in the atmosphere and 
soil, and of nothing else so far as we know. These, 
in different combinations, furnish the physical basis for 
all that he is or may be. The same general composi- 
tion, with here and there an ingredient less or more, 
prevails throughout the whole animal and vegetable 
world. All these exhibit the wonder and mystery of 
that power which we have called Life, by virtue of 
which those inorganic elements are held together in 
countless complex combinations. 

On his purely physical side man therefore presents 
no problem for interpretation beyond what is presented 
by all plants and animals. In many respects he is 
decidedly inferior to other animals, and most assuredly 
could not claim any preeminence. It is not what he 
is physically but what he becomes psychically that 
renders him important and interesting. He is thus 
confronted with himself as a psychical fact to be inter- 
preted, and this necessarily involves the consideration 
of man as he has disclosed himself through all the 



72 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

ages. It is clear to the most careless observer that 
the term applies to a most heterogeneous mass of 
beings. This is so true that to hear that a certain 
living creature was a man would hardly tell us any- 
thing beyond the bare fact that he had the external 
appearance common to men. He might be coarse and 
repulsive^ crude and immature, stupid and incapable, 
brutal and sensual, or he might be refined and culti- 
vated, keen and capable, gentle and even ascetic. He 
might be these in varying degrees, and he might be a 
blending of these contradictory characteristics. The 
term ^^ man " may therefore designate the greatest and 
noblest of all living creatures, or it may apply to the 
meanest and most despicable type of life. Taken 
alone, it lacks all precise significance. 

To comprehend so complex a creature, we need some 
terminology that shall in some way recognize these 
variances as facts. We must see that it is all incidental 
to a process of evolution, and that different individuals 
are merely in different stages of this evolution. The 
very simplest grouping leads us to see (1) man in his 
earliest stage, when he is nearest to pure animal condi- 
tions, prior to awakening to a sense of his high capacity, 
and we may call this the animal-man stage; (2) man 
conscious of strange powers and capacities which he 
is trying to use so as to get more satisfaction out of life. 
There is, then, a consciousness of imperfection, a dim 
yearning after development, a struggle to become more 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 73 

than he now is without quite discerning his goal, and 
this, characterized by discontent, we may call the true 
and typical man stage; (3) man in the stage of achieved 
development, resulting in culture and high character, 
from which comes all that is great and commanding 
in history, and this we may call the human stage. It 
is man developed into the human that has his arts, 
his music, his literatures, his empires, his intellectual 
achievements, his ethical ideals, his laws and his 
religions. These are the works of developed man, and to 
him as thus seen let us appropriate the term " human." 
To interpret himself, man is compelled to consider 
the whole field of organic life, and especially that part 
of it called animal, and he must also consider himself 
as he appears in his lowest as well as in his highest 
estate. We say that there has been an evolution in 
the field of organic life because we find that there lies 
plainly before us evidence of an ascending scale or 
series of graduated existences, each of which neces- 
sarily depends on all below it in the scale, and as the 
grades rise each seems to give the force called life a 
larger and wider field for its activity. However im- 
perfectly we may be able to see how all this has come 
about, it seems reasonable to believe that in some way 
all is linked together as one systematic development 
or evolution, as the harmonious working out of one 
idea, which seems to be the ceaseless effort of life to 
develop organic structures more and more perfectly 



74 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

adapted to serve as its medium of expression or mani- 
festation. We find as facts these gi'aduated existences, 
and when we consider the infinite reciprocal adjust- 
ments that are necessarily implied by all those facts, 
to bring them into and maintain them in harmonious 
working relations, it seems to be an inevitable conclu- 
sion that each, in some way, developed out of the next 
lower and so preceding grade, and that each was alone 
rendered possible by all that had preceded it in the 
great chain of life. 

It is necessary to define the terms '' animal," " man " 
and ^' human'' as clearly as possible, and in all our 
thinking to keep ever in mind their true significance. 
They have been used very inexactly and it has been 
the source of a vast amount of error and confusion. 
Man and animal are as a rule very sharply separated, 
while no distinction is made between man and human. 
The trouble in the whole matter is the impossibility 
of drawing accurate and sharp lines of demarcation. 
When, therefore, we do this in the case of man and 
animal, we introduce an element that is sure to lead 
to error. AVhen in the case of man and human we 
draw no line at all, we Hkewise fall into error. We 
must face all the facts and, taking things as they really 
are, must separate the great multitude of beings into 
such groups or classes as seem to be demanded. If 
we do this we shall find that we must recognize these 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 75 

groups as constituting the evolution, viz.: (1) Her- 
bivorous animals; (2) carnivorous animals; (3) ani- 
mal-men; (4) typical men; (5) humans. We must 
get a fairly definite idea of what we mean by animal, 
and that must be our starting point. 

Some animals appear to have nearly all the qualities 
of man in a rudimentary form or low degree, so that 
we seem forced to believe that the difference in mind 
between man and the higher animals is one of degree 
and not of kind. We must discover what is the essence 
of animal life at its best, what it is that is truly dis- 
tinctive of it and then, whenever we meet this, we 
shall know that we have to do with animal, whatever 
may be the external form or appearance of the being. 
We must seek the inward quality and disregard the 
mere outward appearance. 

The true type of animal is governed or guided by 
what we call instinct. He has no power of abstract 
thought, no clear perception of relationships as such, 
although he may be dimly aware that they exist. He 
has no conception of right and wrong, but unconsciously 
lives conformably to the law of his being. He has no 
problems, no need to study to discover a better way, 
for he instinctively pursues it, has no consciousness of 
self as a personality, and so has no sense of relation- 
ship to the world which involves duties and obligations. 
He does not trouble himself about his condition, does 
not lie awake and weep over his sins, feels no anxiety 



76 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

about his good name and reputation, for he is a creature 
in whom the sense of personal deficiency plays no part. 
Hence he finds existence an end unto itself and seeks 
no reason to justify its continuance. He has no pur- 
pose in living, no end in view, except the doing of those 
things which are necessary to such continuance of 
existence, and all these he does instinctively and, except 
so far as thwarted by circumstances, he does them 
correctly and well. Thus to keep alive is his sole con- 
cern, his summum bonum. There is no need of his 
concerning himself about anything else. He has no 
fret, worry, anxiety, ambition or expectation as to the 
future. Animal life is thus capable of being in an 
ideal degree a state of placid contentment, a serene, 
untroubled sequence of days, every wish and longing 
satisfied, with no regrets for the past, no complaints 
for the present and no expectations for the future. 
Merely to live this present moment; to do only that 
which seems now most desirable; to seek that which 
now seems most attractive and take no thought for the 
morrow; to borrow no trouble as to failure of food at 
any future time; to look forward to no possibilities of 
disaster; to fear no harm except that which is now 
present, and to forget that as soon as it has passed, — 
this is the real type or essence of animal life when 
taken at its best. About this there is a certain charm. 
There can be no greater error than to conceive of animal 
life as necessarily low and degraded, for, taken at its 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 77 

best, it is idyllic and is characterized by a profound 
sense of contentment. It gives glimpses of many fine 
qualities. Recall the love of the doe for her fawn or 
the dove for her nesthngs; the reckless bravery of the 
bear in defence of her cubs or the partridge in pro- 
tecting her young; the fidelity of the lory to his mate 
or the dog to his master. Is not this the germ of all 
the affectional side of man's nature? 

Now in its rise out of mere animal conditions the 
race must have passed through a stage in which man's 
living was of this type. If this had been permanent 
and fixed, if it had been the climax of the evolution, 
there would have been no history, no civilization with 
its painful struggle for development. There would 
have been no sense of sin, no consciousness of failure, 
no discontent, no puzzling over the complex problems 
of life and death. In a word, all that is now distinc- 
tive of man's Ufe would have been absent. Seeking 
to do nothing that was high and noble he would have 
been spared the tragedy of failure. Life from our 
present point of view would have been empty and 
worthless, but it would have been in a way placid and 
free from care, worry and discontent. Man would 
have been destitute of knowledge, would have had no 
idea of those things which we deem so valuable and 
necessary, but he would not have been aware of any 
loss, nor would he have suffered one pang of regret, 
any more than does the mere animal now. This early 



78 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

stage leaves no written history, for it does not reach 
the art of writing and sees no need of any record of 
existence. In the historical period little is recorded 
except the struggle of man to rise, so that it is the 
painful story of his experiences after leaving this early 
stage. Except in individual cases and sometimes in 
the discovery of small, isolated communities, that 
stage is to-day rarely seen. We may certainly every- 
where find men living in this status, but they are not 
characteristic of any large social group. History is 
really the story of development and, as soon as this 
truly begins, collective man has passed out of the simple 
existence of the animal and is on the road to humanity. 
Until this development begins and makes some written 
record, we do not in any real sense have to deal with 
the true type of man at all. If we do not clearly see 
this stage of transition — this stage which is really the 
emergence of man out of animal, in which he is mainly 
animal but is taking his first steps as man; this stage 
of psychical infancy or childhood in which he is creeping 
preparatory to walking — we shall entirely lose the 
sahent point of his evolution. Development has been 
a painful process, but the pains have been those inci- 
dental and necessary to all birth. If we could go back 
to that remote period when collective man had not as 
yet risen above the animal plane, we should find abso- 
lutely nothing which we count distinctive of humanity. 
That stage was, as it were, the chrysalis of humanity, 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 79 

and the day when man emerged therefrom, — the time 
of his psychical awakening, when his mind entered 
its distinctive realm, — was the first of a series of mar- 
velous changes which have seemed truly to be trans- 
formations of his very nature itself. He is, indeed, a 
creature with a progressively complex consciousness. 

This is the fact at the bottom of all myths as to a 
Golden Age and a primitive Paradise. It is the passage 
from this status into the early stages of discontent and 
struggle that have been figuratively designated as the 
Fall of Man. From a figurative Paradise the being 
passed into a figurative Purgatory, the stage of struggle, 
failure, testing and trial, which is the distinctive charac- 
teristic of the life of typical man. 

It is clear that the pure animal type passes over into 
the pure man type, not by a leap or a bound, but by 
almost countless gradations. Then, again, man is not 
one well-defined thing, always the same or even sub- 
stantially the same, but he exists in endless varying 
grades. If, now, we think of everything that has a 
certain external appearance as being man and assume 
that, in each one of these, there are the same qualities 
and capacities, we make a mistake that will vitiate all 
our conclusions. It is certainly true that there is a 
vast mass of beings, having all the appearance of men, 
who essentially live on exactly the plane which we have 
found to be characteristic of the animal. And yet it is 



80 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

equally clear that they are more than mere animal, for 
they possess that degree of psychical capacity which 
discloses the earhest phase of what is to culminate in 
humanity. These men arrive at some use of language 
and in every way find a wider field of action than any 
mere animal, without, however, losing the benefits 
flowing from dependence on the inerrancy of instinct. 
These we have called animal-men, as constituting a 
sort of border-land between animals and men, having 
all the benefits of animal existence and some of the 
benefits of man's existence, without feeling those dis- 
advantages so conspicuously realized by the true type 
of man. They enjoy life after the manner of animals, 
having no anxieties or aspirations except as other 
animals have. They are indifferent to future perils 
because imconscious of them, shrinking from no con- 
sequences because perceiving none. Some mentality 
there must have been from the start, but no suggestion 
of conscience or moral sense. They use such means 
as they have for their preservation, feeling no pride or 
emotion beyond mere animal content with the end 
achieved. There is no love, but then there is no con- 
scious hatred. There is at times ferocity, but every 
one expects it, for it is as natural as breathing. There 
is no individual right or even sense of property. He 
who can may get and keep. There is no sympathy 
with suffering, no remorse for wrong-doing, for there is 
no perception of right and wrong. Loss of life is an 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 81 

ordinary event to which no one pays any attention, 
except instinctively to prevent it in his own case if he 
can. They admire nothing, for there is nothing to 
admire. They have Httle or no sense of wonder, and 
their courage is not different from that of all other 
animals. All conduct seems to be determined by the 
rigorous necessity of the present moment. 

If, however, they are placed imder conditions favor- 
able to healthy and normal animal life, these animal- 
men develop in a way that has nothing repulsive or evil 
about it, though they may show no sort of intellectual 
or spiritual capacity. They may disclose what is even 
pleasant and attractive and at times may show a charm- 
ing simplicity and naivete. Such living has its own 
peculiar status and must not be confused with types 
that are essentially different, for animal-men seem to 
obey unconsciously the laws of their own being in 
such a way or degree as to be at least healthy and 
normal in their own animal way. They are living in 
a childish stage, physically full grown but with the 
mental capacity of a little child. They see with the 
eyes of children and enjoy the irresponsible content- 
ment of childhood. They speak, but do not analyze 
their speech. They use symbols to express ideas, but 
they do not know what a symbol is, nor do they know 
what an idea is. They think, but do not know that 
they do so. They have an organism which is capable of 
great development, have an innate potential capacity, 



82 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

but they are not at all conscious of it. They have the 
initial stage of a keen sensitivity, but are not as yet sen- 
sitive to a point that has any real value or significance. 
It is the limitation of consciousness to its lowest terms. 

In the evolution of this animal-man there may come 
a time when the instinct develops or rises into some 
degree of true consciousness and passes over into some 
degree of what we call reason. The rise of even a 
slight degree of conscious intelligence or reason neces- 
sarily checks the operation of the same force in its 
unconscious manner. While reason has a boundless 
field for development and opens the way to extraor- 
dinary fulness and richness of living, the animal has 
lost, so far as purely animal living is concerned, his 
most valuable possession. To enter the larger field as 
man, he has become less perfect as animal and, imless 
the conscious exercise of reason shall make him vastly 
better than the animal, he is certainly put at a disad- 
vantage by the rise and partial development of reason. 
He is lured on in the quest for reason by an instinctive 
love of power, and he has an instinctive sense that 
reason is the true source of power. Having secured 
it in some degree he is compelled to develop it to save 
himself from its otherwise destructive consequences. 
In the ancient symbolism the apple or forbidden fruit 
typified reason, having eaten which man could never 
thereafter escape the inevitable consequences. 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 83 

Thus the rise of reason marks the advent of typical 
man, who has emerged from the status of animal so 
completely as to lose the pecuHar charm and content- 
ment of that sphere. Men have intelligence enough 
to make them discontented with mere animal condi- 
tions, so that they are worse off than the true type of 
animal unless they rise high enough to reach a new 
sphere of life having its own satisfactions and rewards. 
That sphere is humanity. These men suffer the most 
and compel the most sympathy, for they have the 
burden of reason without its real advantages. They 
know enough to be keenly conscious of their miseries 
without knowing enough to rise above them. In their 
case life is a burden, a tragedy and at times a curse. 
They are truly the unfortunates of the world. Be- 
tween animal contentment and true human content- 
ment lie these millions of men without contentment 
of any sort whatever. It seems to be true that if being 
cannot rise into the true human sphere it had better, so 
far as the individual is concerned, stay in the true ani- 
mal sphere. There is happiness in the two extremes, but 
there is misery in the region between. Man always looks 
back to the true animal life with longing. Strenuous 
and hard is the road towards humanity, and he would 
fain throw off the burden and revert to animal condi- 
tions. The popular idea of heaven is really a dream 
of such a return at the end of life. There is to be a 
time when the burden of existence will roll off, when 



84 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

there will be nothing to do, nothing to fear, nothing to 
suffer and no duties. It will be mere placid, idle exis- 
tence, endless enjoyment, all singing, sight-seeing and 
gratification, untroubled by the need of thought, — a 
return to instinct and a riddance of reason. This is 
essentially an animal ideal. 

The same feeling appears in the myth of the Garden 
of Eden, which symbolizes the true animal contentment 
and peace of life. The desire for knowledge, the ambi- 
tion to reach humanity, to be as God, knowing right 
and wrong, leads man out of the garden, to which he 
looks back with longing. He can never return, for 
reason once become conscious does not permit a return 
to instinct, the imconscious reason. He must go for- 
ward or he must die. If he has not the capacity to 
rise higher he may sink so as to be lower than the 
animal, may be more wretched, miserable and degraded, 
until he may end in wickedness of which the animal 
cannot be guilty. He must at least work towards 
humanity or he is lost. That is the true prize of his 
high calling. It thus becomes entirely a question of 
development. Reason, that is finally to be man's 
crowning glory, begins by degrading his life. It is truly 
his fall from the innocence of animal fife. It is 
essentially a fall upward, for while at the time it is 
truly a fall to a lower point of happiness, it is a neces- 
sary step towards a status which, when reached, is 
immeasurably higher than that from which he fell. 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 85 

This may sound like a paradox, but it is plain fact. 
As the beginning of reason may be his fall, so the end 
of reason will be his salvation. As partial development 
may be his curse, so full development will be his blessing. 
In any case, if he is to go on into higher stages of life, 
he must be attended by reason, for, under complexity 
of conditions, the simple instinct seems to run the risk 
of actual perversion. Reason is needed to keep the 
man adjusted to the new conditions, to keep sane and 
wholesome under complexity of status what was so 
without reflection under simplicity of status. Reason 
when thus developed is, therefore, illuminated and 
expanded instinct. 

The simple, tranquil, unaffected, contented life that 
we often see in a peasant, who has no education and 
no apparent development, is purely instinctive and is 
right, true and genuine so far as it goes. But there is no 
depth to it, no scope, no breadth of vision. Now, to be 
thus simple, thus unaffected, to be essentially as tranquil 
and contented as this peasant and yet combine it with 
the higher intelligence, the higher purpose, the clearer, 
broader vision, — this is to rise to the human level. 

Man differs from other animals in the degree of 
consciousness he is capable of developing. His one 
pecuharity is to be possessed of this power, in this 
degree, and it constitutes his psychical nature. He 
is, so to speak, rooted in consciousness, which alone 



86 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

renders Self possible. As self is the mind or thinking 
principle^ the status of self is an intellectual status, and 
so men must be graded along the lines of self-develop- 
ment, which means intellectual development. Thus the 
terms ^^ animal-men/' '^men" and ^^ humans/' which 
designate such gradations, are terms that imply degrees 
of such development, that is to say, degrees of conscious 
intelligence. This development is in certain directions 
which we call rational, psychical or spiritual. The 
capacity so to develop is all that makes him man and 
he must, therefore, be regarded chiefly as a psychical 
being. The earhest result of this innate capacity is 
that he becomes possessed of knowledge, and then 
gains an interpretative faculty leading to wisdom, 
whereby he consciously seeks truth. He is the only 
living being that does this or can do it. As necessary 
for this and as preliminary to it, he creates language 
and uses arbitrary symbols to represent his ideas and 
thoughts, whereby he can record his progress and 
transmit to his children the results of his psychical 
activity, making each generation the heir of all the 
preceding and creating a continuity of hfe which per- 
mits racial development as if the race were one indi- 
vidual that did not die. This, then, is man, the sole 
possessor of knowledge and wisdom, the sole seeker 
after truth, the sole being capable of communicating 
this by speech to his fellows and of writing it so as to 
pass it along to his successors. What he gains need 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 87 

not die with him, but may become a permanent pos- 
session of his race. The thought which came to him 
individually need not remain merely his, but may 
become the thought of millions because of his power 
to speak and write. All that he ever becomes grows 
out of this innate spiritual capacity and he knows by 
experience that this, in its degree, is his peculiar heritage 
not shared with other animals. It follows then neces- 
sarily that it is only as he does these things that other 
animals cannot do, only as he uses his peculiar capacity, 
only as he speaks, writes, reflects, studies and develops 
his psychical, spiritual or rational nature that he is 
truly man. 

By observation and reflection a developed man be- 
comes conscious that the mysterious force acts in him 
and manifests itself to him in three modes or ways. 
He knows that he does innumerable things unconsciously 
and that if he did not do these things he would not 
continue to live. These acts are always purposive and 
seem to imply foresight and knowledge, and yet he is 
aware that they were done by him without conscious 
effort, without any knowledge or foresight. He knows 
that for a long period he was not capable of any con- 
scious effort, was not even aware of his own existence, 
had absolutely no knowledge or foresight, and yet he 
did all these acts which implied such power. He was 
then resting merely in those conditions in which all 



88 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

other animals and animal-men continue solely to rest 
throughout their entire existence, for his actions were 
what we call instinctive. Incapable of self-action, he 
was guided and controlled as if he were capable and, 
in a large measure, such action remains true throughout 
the whole course of every man's life. Most of our 
purely animal functions are always thus performed so 
that in that field we are, as it were, automatic, acting 
without conscious effort, and yet in such cases always 
doing the right thing. 

If he develops he becomes at last conscious of self, 
conscious that he has certain powers which he instinc- 
tively seeks to exercise. This is the rise into conscious- 
ness of the psychical element in his nature, the dawn of 
reason, the beginning of the spiritual. He has entered 
the realm of the ordinary conscious mind and is a 
candidate for humanity. 

If he develops still further, he at last becomes 
aware, in a subtle way, that back of this conscious 
mind, which he seems to control, Hes what he calls 
subconscious mind, which he does not control, and 
it is to this that he owes all that in him is truly com- 
manding and great. He does not know how this 
operates nor when it operates. He only knows that 
suddenly he becomes aware that it has operated and, 
by a flash of illumination, he knows what a moment 
before he did not know. This he feels to be an inspira- 
tion or revelation. All his profoundest thoughts thus 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 89 

come to him from this mind which is, as it were, lurking 
behind the usual conscious mind. He seems to reach 
it and come into relation to it only by and after develop- 
ing his ordinary conscious mind. Resting at first in 
instinct, he rises into conscious mind, and by developing 
this he reaches a relation to subconscious mind, which 
is the ultimate limit of his power to reach and realize 
that universal mind which he instinctively apprehends 
as the source of his capacity. It all occurs and can 
only occur in the field of personal experience and per- 
sonal consciousness. Aside from this no man can have 
any real evidence of it, and so no man ever truly under- 
stands it in others except in the degree in which he has 
personally realized it in his own life. Up to that point 
he really knows, but beyond that he can only believe 
on the testimony of others. He cannot have true 
knowledge beyond the bounds of his own developed 
consciousness. 

The human class, as highly developed, has these 
three relations to spirit. Typical man has but two of 
them, for he rests in instinct and ordinary conscious 
mind, not reaching any noticeable functioning of spirit 
as a subconscious force. Animal-man has but one such 
relation, for he is essentially a mere creature of instinct, 
not disclosing any valuable functioning of spirit as 
even conscious mind. 

It is, therefore, by developing his latent, inherent 
powers that man grows into what, in the high sense of 



90 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

that term, we have called the human. Not to see 
clearly this distinction between the words '^ man " and 
'' human '' is entirely to lose the point and significance 
of this evolution. Humanity is not a term that, in its 
strict and high sense, should be used to refer to all men. 
Man and human should not be used interchangeably, 
but ought clearly to point to different stages of develop- 
ment. All men may become human, but only a small 
part of all men ever do actually become such, which 
merely means that they do not in fact reach that 
development of which they are theoretically capable. 
Man evolves from animal-man and human evolves 
from man. There are now in existence beings in almost 
every stage of this psychical evolution, which is not 
merely a process of the past, but is ever present, now 
and always going on, in which evolution the world 
groans and travails. The human type is, so far as we 
know, the culmination of all life, its highest form, the 
crowning glory of the universe. We find all gradations 
of this human type from its lowest and weakest form 
up to those characters that shine like stars in the history 
of the race, whose names die not though ages pass 
away, whose thoughts and examples are the most 
precious possession of the world. 

We have now considered animal-men, men and 
humans. Animal-men five mainly by instinct but 
disclose the initial stages of rising reason. Typical 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 91 

men lose instinct except as an incident, and are charac- 
terized by reason, but only in a rather undeveloped 
condition. Humanity is characterized by a cultivated 
and trained reason, which yields fruitage hardly to be 
suspected from seeing it in its crude state. Neither 
class, however, is sharply defined, but each melts into 
the others by countless gradations. To take this mass 
of beings thus essentially different and refer to them 
by one term, obliterating and forgetting these differ- 
ences and assuming equality of capacity and develop- 
ment, is to make a mistake of the most serious character. 
Man thus looked at is indeed an enigma, a riddle, a 
paradox, a bundle of contradictions and inconsistencies, 
a hopeless puzzle, an unanswerable commdrum. The 
phrase ^^ collective humanity" has nothing to do with the 
great mass of men who are essentially animals, or with 
men who are indeed truly men but not yet truly human. 
The term '' humanity " should only refer to the flower of 
the race, to those men only who have reached such 
development as makes them in some degree true types 
of high character, to those who are in some degree 
incarnations of high ideals, to those who as living 
organisms show the moral, intellectual and spiritual 
life as an existent fact. This humanity has always 
been a tiny minority of the race; has always been a 
sort of advance guard, a band of pioneers, the pro- 
gressive element; has always been misunderstood, iso- 
lated, unpopular, crucified by the great mass of men. 



92 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

It is the sane element in an insane world. It is the 
leaven whose presence is necessary to produce moral 
and spiritual fermentation and life in the intellectually 
inert mass. 

As an animal, man could have lived without knowing 
either heaven or hell. As a typical man he must at 
least be moving towards the heaven of humanity or 
run the risk of sinking into a hell below all animalism. 
It is an awful dilemma, and before it stands the great 
mass of men. Each must work out his own salvation 
aided by the kind ministrations of that humanity 
towards which he aspires. He must find salvation by 
rising until he can live above his animal self, so as to 
dominate and control it to higher and nobler ends. 
This applies to every man born into the world, however 
favorable his environment may appear to be. Every 
man begins by being mere animal. He then, as a boy, 
becomes animal-man and has the happy irresponsibility 
of the animal along with traits which are clearly supe- 
rior to any that mere animals ever have. He has the 
free and full pleasure of existence without regard to 
anything else. To develop out of this is merely to 
awaken to consciousness of power and capacity, which 
brings with it a sense of duty and responsibility, causing 
life to become a serious matter. Childish things pass 
away and this is the critical stage of his career, for he 
is now typical man. Will he remain that or will he go 
on and so develop as to reach the human stage? He 



ANIMAL — MAN — HUMAN. 93 

is confronted by the intellectual and spiritual field of 
activity, and in this each man must achieve his own 
victories. To reach the excellence of the true human 
life demands personal search after wisdom, the exercise 
of self-control and the constant denial of the appeal 
made by the lower self. 

If we use symbolic phrase, we may say that animal- 
men live in a sort of Paradise, while typical men live 
in a sort of Purgatory, from which some rise to the 
Heaven of humanity, which is the Kingdom of God, 
while some descend to that degraded life, which is Hell, 
while ineffective mediocrity finds no room in either of 
those places, but to the end remains in Purgatory as its 
only fit abode. 



IV. 



SPIRIT. 

Life, appearing in multifarious forms, culminates in 
man with his power to develop into the human. We 
say that this power, peculiar to man, is due to the fact 
that he reveals more perfectly than any other creature 
or thing the essential nature of the universal force, to 
which as thus revealed we give the distinctive name of 
Spirit. This must be clearly understood not to involve 
any idea that the term '^ spirit " refers to some peculiar 
force, but merely that it is the one manifestation which 
seems in a peculiar degree to disclose the nature of 
the one force and, as such, seems to be a unique and 
supremely important manifestation. If there is any- 
where a clue the following of which may lead us to some 
idea as to the nature of God, we feel that it is here. 

Therefore, when we seek to interpret the mysterious 
realities that exist outside of us, we are forced to do it 
by using what we find within us as such a clue or key. 
If we have any idea of force or energy, it rests on the 
discovery of this in our own nature. If we have an 
idea of causation it is because we ourselves are causes. 
If we have an idea of intelligence it is because we pos- 
sess it. In every case our own power is our only basis 



SPIRIT. 95 

for conceiving any such power outside ourselves. We 
therefore interpret, and can only interpret, the universe 
in terms of our own nature. If the result secured is 
erroneous we cannot help it, for if this key will not 
serve us we have no other. It is also true that when 
we seek adequately to interpret our own nature, we 
never realize its dignity and significance until we have 
translated the individual terms into the universal, until 
we have seen that the one is in a measure a reflection 
of the other. There must be some imderlying unity, 
since each serves to interpret the other. 

When we study man, we are always forced back to 
one single word as the root of all his distinctive life, 
and that word is ^' consciousness." It is the condition 
precedent to all his development, the root out of which 
has come all that he is. It is to be conceived not as 
an active force or faculty but as a sensitivity or recep- 
tivity which is the very essential element of his inmost 
being, if it is not that being itself. It is an innate 
capacity for development imder stimulating environ- 
ment. Differences in men are entirely due to differing 
degrees of consciousness. One is able to perceive and 
feel what is entirely hidden from another. Having 
apparently similar organisms, yet, in the psychical 
field, one sees while the other is blind. The richness 
and fulness of life are therefore entirely due to this 
power to see and feel, this power to realize the signifi- 
cance of what is spread before him and be interested 



96 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

in it, and all this flows from capacity for consciousness. 
These differences cannot be explained. They are 
merely facts. One man has an exquisite sensitivity 
involving the power to respond to science and litera- 
ture, to music and art, so that, however he is placed, 
he is able to find something which interests him 
and awakens his enthusiasm. Another is stolid, sees 
little or nothing, cannot be stimulated into any sort 
of mental activity. One develops and is ever able 
to see and feel and know more than he had before, 
while the other remains seemingly incapable of any 
growth except in a physical way. This applies to the 
whole field of life, to the craftsmen and all skilled 
workmen as much as to the poet, artist and student; 
to the higher industrial sphere as well as to the domain 
of estheticism, for all enthusiasm rests on seeing and 
feeling the attractiveiless of some appeal to this con- 
sciousness coupled with the ability to respond in some 
effective degree, wherein Hes all true happiness. The 
power to perceive the appeal and to respond to it is 
dependent on being conscious of it, and this conscious- 
ness is the presence of spirit. Power to develop is, 
therefore, direct evidence that spirit is present, and 
this appUes to the entire life of man outside of his 
purely animal functions. It connotes capacity to 
conceive and hold an ideal of some sort of excellence 
and to feel impelled to rise to the higher standard of 
the ideal. 



SPIRIT. 97 

If spirit as consciousness were entirely withdrawn 
from a man, then, though his physical organism 
persisted, he would have ceased to exist as man, for 
the essential element would be lacking and none of the 
development characteristic of normal man would be 
possible. So far as he is man, and so long as he 
continues to be man, it is due to the presence in some 
degree of consciousness as spirit. He cannot deny or 
doubt the testimony of this consciousness without 
denying or doubting his own existence. Whatever this 
tells him is true and real must appear valid to him. 
Indeed, the conclusion is for him irresistible. He must 
accept it as authoritative, and its evidence must be 
regarded as authentic if there is to be for him anything 
in the way of truth. If he cannot trust his conscious- 
ness he can trust nothing whatever, for all phenomena 
are to him real only so far as he is conscious of them. 

The conscious self is the same as conscious mind. 
I am conscious because I am mind, of which conscious- 
ness is an inevitable and necessary incident. I am 
not merely affected by mind but I am mind itself, in 
my own degree, and this degree is indicated by the 
quality and degree of my consciousness. I consider, 
weigh, balance and discriminate, and this is mind in 
the status of reflection. I approve or disapprove, 
judge and determine the propriety of the action in the 
light of my reflection, and this is mind in the status of 



98 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

conscience. Having reflected and decided I go forth 
to act, to carry into effect the decision based on reflec- 
tion and sanctioned by conscience, and this is mind in 
the status of will. Now there are not three forces but 
one force, and that is spirit appearing as conscious 
mind, that is to say, spirit enabling me to appear as I 
myself. Reason, conscience and will are, therefore, 
terms that designate the coordinating elements that 
constitute what is really a unit, which, as thus existent, 
with these elements indissolubly united and interacting, 
we call the psychical self, meaning mind conscious of 
its identity as an existing and operative force. The 
sense of self-existence is an inevitable and necessary 
concomitant of conscious mind, but there is nothing 
corresponding to the concept except the mind in which 
it inheres. 

Spirit, as it appears in man, is a potential capacity 
analogous to the germinal power in an egg or a seed, 
which may in time be developed or it may be lost and 
so never ripen into anything whatever. A tiny lettuce 
seed must contain potentially in itself all that subse- 
quently follows as a result of its being planted, and 
yet we cannot comprehend how this is possible. The 
seed is apparently as inert as any bit of inorganic 
matter, and until it has the proper environment no 
sign of its life appears. Its germinal capacity would 
not even be suspected, or be discoverable by any micro- 



SPIRIT. 99 

scope, but when the proper group of physical and 
chemical conditions is suppHed, then it is fully demon- 
strated and stands thereafter as a proven fact. There 
must be something in the lettuce seed which reacts on 
these elements by which it is surrounded when properly 
planted, but there certainly can be no greater mystery 
than its capacity thus to react and proceed to grow 
into the beautiful product that it does. A dozen lettuce 
seeds, exactly alike to all appearance and of the tiniest 
size, may, as we know, lock up a dozen different kinds 
of lettuce, each of which has its own peculiar appear- 
ance and characteristics when fully grown. If we 
were seeking for mystery it would seem as if we could 
find enough of it in all this. 

Now spirit in man is merely the same sort of poten- 
tial capacity, entirely hidden, unsuspected and undis- 
coverable until under the proper environment it ripens 
into the human or spiritual life as a demonstrated fact. 
It is always the same in kind in all men in whom it 
appears at all, but it may and does differ in degree. 
Moreover, these differences may be so great as to make 
it appear as if there were a difference in kind, which 
for all practical purposes there is. The potential 
power contains in itself no guarantee of any develop- 
ment except under favorable conditions and these 
involve what may be called, in a word, stimulating 
environment, surroundings which furnish fruitful 
experiences leading to observation and reflection. All 



100 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

man's special, distinctive faculties are, therefore, only 
developments. He is not born with conscience but 
merely with a power to develop conscience under the 
proper conditions. He is not born with reason but is 
capable of developing it. He has at birth no person- 
ality but must work to achieve it. These faculties 
are like branches of a tree of which the innate capacity 
is the seed or root. At first there is but the tiny seed, 
the germinal principle, like an acorn which holds in 
itself potentially the future oak tree. If the acorn 
never finds its suitable environment there will never 
be a tree, but it is still true that in the acorn was con- 
cealed the possibility of a tree. The acorn may sprout 
and roots may form and even some trunk may appear 
with tiny branches and then, because the conditions 
of nourishment fail, there will be no more growth and, 
at last, it may die without any effective realization of 
the potential tree. 

Of this capacity we are never directly conscious, 
for our consciousness only begins with the reaction of 
experience upon the psychical sensitivity, and therefore 
we know nothing except what we learn by observation 
and reflection. The mind comes to the perception of 
itself as an immanent force only after such degree of 
development as enables it to use its own powers to 
study its own operations and seek an explanation 
therefor. The mind then turns its own powers on this 
study, which is an interpretation of itself, and this 



SPIRIT. 101 

action, reflex in its nature, is what we call reflection. 
It is thus that we secure certain ideas indirectly by 
inference, deduction and reflex action, as to that force, 
of whose presence we are never directly conscious. 
All this, however, implies conscious effort and the use 
of mind, by itself as subject upon itself as object, 
and this is only possible when mind has reached some 
considerable measure of development. It implies a 
status of developed consciousness in which we become 
aware of powers and capacities not hitherto suspected 
to be resident in us. If the development is continued 
there is a constant and growing sense of freshly acquired 
power, so that there comes to be a true consciousness 
of growth and progi'ess. We ask what it is that is 
thus growing, and this compels us to interpret the 
phenomenon. We see before we know that we have 
eyes and before we know that it is by using the eyes 
that we are able to see. In the same way we think 
and use mind instinctively before w^e consciously know 
that we have any mind at all, and we are led to do this 
by power inherent in mind itself. The force operates, 
and after it has done so we may by reflection reach 
the idea of its necessary preexistence as an explanation 
or cause of the action. 

What we call life is power to react on environment. 
The beginning of life is the rise of an organism, in an 
initial stage of sensitivity, which enables an evolution 



102 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

to begin and to proceed continuously, as a series of 
numberless reactions rendered possible by environing 
circumstances. Force, when thus acting in or through 
such an organism, appears as the directing, guiding, 
controlling principle which builds up and perfects the 
organism and causes it to unfold what we call its nature. 
The force is therefore not the result of the organism, 
but, on the contrary, the organism is the result of the 
force. This force in and through which all things 
live, move and have their being, which appears in man 
as an innate capacity, manifesting itself as mind, 
intelligence, sensitivity, consciousness, which, as it 
develops, gives rise to reason, conscience, will, character 
and personality, we designate and define as spirit. 
When the living being is capable of consciousness of 
the presence of the force, and seems to be able to exer- 
cise it consciously, as if it were a personal possession, 
we call it the highest form in which, so far as we know, 
spirit ever expresses itself and we define that life as 
psychical, rational or spiritual, as contrasted with those 
types of life in which the subject is unconscious of 
such a presence and does not consciously use the force. 
To interpret spirit we must study its manifestations 
and, so far as possible, must observe its mode of action. 
This each man must do by looking into his own inner 
consciousness and by studying his own acts and those 
of his fellows, assuming that they are animated by 
the same force that he is conscious of possessing in 



SPIRIT. 103 

himself. Thus all that we can know of spirit is really 
a knowledge of man and human, for this is the only 
manifestation of which we have any immediate per- 
ception. We cannot fathom it« essence, but we may 
nevertheless have some definite ideas about it, since 
each man gets these from his personal self -consciousness. 
He knows spirit as an undoubted fact, to which all 
that is in him certifies and bears witness. He knows 
that it is at the very root of his personality; that it 
is, indeed, this immanent presence that renders him a 
mystery to himself. 

What, then, is this spiritual capacity peculiar to man? 
It includes, and is, all his power to know, think, form 
discriminating judgments, perceive relationships and 
have a sense of right and wrong. Because of it, he 
becomes able consciously to have and to exercise intel- 
ligence; to conceive and be influenced by ideals; to 
recognize and yield obedience to his sense of obligation, 
duty and responsibility; to penetrate the secret of the 
universe, to learn its laws and cause them to obey him 
and serve his purposes; to study the planets and stars, 
naming them, measuring their distances, discovering 
their orbits and explaining the laws of their motion; 
to create systems of science and law, literatures and 
social institutions; to have a sense of the beautiful, 
leading him to conceive, create and enjoy art and 
weave the intricate harmony of music. In a word, it 
is that capacity which enables him to study, reflect. 



104 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and find out God. It causes the law of man's being 
to involve constant development, enables him to move 
ever towards wider spheres of action and ever to 
become more than he has been. 

Every man experiences in some degree a tendency 
towards the growth or unfolding of a potency that 
seems to be within him. He feels as if he ought to 
resist and overcome his faults and imperfections and 
develop into what is right, real and true in spite of all 
his frailty, incapacity and sin. He feels that he has 
unused capacities pressing for their natural develop- 
ment, and when this growth is prevented he feels that 
he is less than he ought to be and less than he might 
have been if he had done otherwise. He feels that 
beneath the ugliness of his actual life there is a forma- 
tive power ever urging him towards a truer life which 
is beautiful. He feels that, in place of chaos and 
disorder in his hfe there should be harmony; in place 
of ignorance there should be sound and clear under- 
standing; in place of impurity and evil there should 
be virtue and clean-handed integrity. If he does not in 
any degree feel this he has not reached the spiritual 
status but is merely animal-man, for in every being 
who ranks as truly man there is at least a tendency 
towards harmonious growth, a tendency to unfold 
certain concealed powers and to proceed, as it were, 
from the germ to the full fruit. His mind is filled 
with longing, however faint, after something he might 



SPIRIT. 105 

be and is not; a yearning after a destiny that he seems 
to feel that he can attain and which it seems that he 
ought to attain, which attracts and fascinates him in 
a way he cannot explain and forces on him a haunting 
consciousness of imperfection which he would throw 
off if he could. He seems to be animated by a prin- 
ciple or force that will grow by its own might if only 
he will not smother it, if only he will restrain his lower 
self. Reason pleads with him and would lead him 
from the symbol to the thing really signified, from the 
rule to the principle, from the principle to the purpose, 
from the purpose to the living force or character in 
which all purpose originates. If he obeys this reason, 
if he but yields himself to it and trusts it, he discovers 
and comes to possess regulative truth, gets knowledge 
of realities and rests in peace. Whoever you may be, 
however distinguished, famous and capable, or however 
commonplace, you still feel that you ought to have 
been more capable than you have been, and are now, 
in your special field. Despite all apparent success you 
realize your failure to reach the ideal that you had, 
and you feel that it has been due to indolence and love 
of paltry and foolish pleasures. You are always con- 
scious that you might have been more than you are, 
that you had great possibilities which in your actual 
life you have not grasped and reached. You cannot 
escape this consciousness, for you are by nature a 
spiritual being and as such you worship the ideal and 



106 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

regret your failure to attain it. This consciousness is 
the pervading presence of spirit. You are a creature 
whose pecuhar characteristic it is to be inescapably 
aware that you ought to be developing a subtle power 
within you which is spirit appearing as your very self. 
Let a man but once reach a degree of sensitivity which 
permits this appeal to be felt and never again, except 
by spiritually dying, shall he go from its presence or 
escape its constant solicitation and reproach. Feeble 
as it may seem to be, it will persist and grow unless 
there is such abuse of the organism that the sensitivity, 
on which all such individual consciousness seems to 
depend, is utterly destroyed. The original, native, 
initial sensitivity is spirit potentially present in a sort 
of germinal way. If it be once truly extinguished, it 
never reappears in that individual. So far as he is 
concerned it is gone forever, for he is spiritually dead 
and lives on as mere animal. He has quenched the 
spirit. Such cases are, however, extremely rare, for 
nothing is more wonderful than the persistence of this 
sensitivity after such abuse as appears to have extin- 
guished it. For all practical purposes we may, and 
we always do, assume that, once it is there, it is always 
there, so that it ever yields the possibility of a success- 
ful appeal even under circumstances and conditions 
that are repellent and discouraging, for nothing is more 
remarkable than such survival of spirit when every 
visible trace of its active presence has disappeared. 



SPIRIT. 107 

But while for the sake of securing some degree of 
precision and some basis resting in ascertainable fact, 
we have defined spirit as this pecuUar psychical capacity 
which is distinctive of man, we do not imply that the 
force does not operate outside of man. If it were not 
resident in us we could have no idea whatever of its 
existence. We must secure a safe and proper definition 
by referring only to those qualities which every man 
consciously possesses and which each man can readily 
study as they are in himself. Such definition stands 
for a reality, and careful investigation in this limited 
field must yield a degree of truth. We may thus get 
some idea of what spirit is and what are its modes of 
operation. We must always remember, however, that 
it is solely because we are possessed of spirit that we 
are able to study it and even to raise a question as to 
its operation elsewhere than in that field from whose 
study we secure the conception itself. 

Now it seems to be a fact that the more clearly a 
man comes to understand the nature of spirit as it 
exists in himself, the more he comes to feel that it is 
a force whose presence and activity cannot be limited 
to such a narrow field. He seems to be compelled to 
believe that wherever he sees evidence of intelligence, 
will and purpose anywhere operative, in any form 
whatever, it is necessarily that same force which rises 
consciously in him. We therefore conceive spirit to 
be the very essence of intelligence and to be charac- 



108 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

terized by will, motive, consciousness and universality. 
All instincts and all impulsions, whether physical or 
chemical, presuppose and necessitate an antecedent 
force as the cause thereof and, as all the manifestations 
of this force disclose intelligence, the force must itself 
be regarded as in some way similar to what characterizes 
these multitudinous manifestations. It must be in the 
general what all these are in the particular. 

We see that it may operate without any conscious 
cooperation on the part of the creature or thing in 
which it operates and that this seems to cover every 
field except the rational life as seen in man. The rise 
of man, as a being capable of consciously possessing 
and using intelligence, is therefore the rise of an incar- 
nation or physical embodiment of spirit itself. So far 
as man does become thus conscious, he becomes a 
spiritual creature. In the earliest stages of development 
he is, however, merely capable of consciously reacting 
on experience, whereby he becomes the conscious pos- 
sessor of knowledge as the product resulting from the 
exercise of mind in a series of such reactions. This 
is, however, but the beginning of a development which, 
if continued far enough, results in such clearness of 
perception and such nicety of discrimination as to 
permit inferences, deductions and judgments which are 
a basis for argument and this we call the status of 
reason, which is therefore not innate in man but results 
from the capacity which is innate. The throng and 



SPIRIT. 109 

succession of experiences, observations and reflections 
develops the awakened mind and brings into existence 
personality, involving character, which in turn mani- 
fests itself as active will, whose multitudinous volitions 
disclose and are controlled by that function of the mind 
which we call conscience. 

Spirit seems to operate in relation to man in three 
ways. Thus it operates when he is unconscious of it; 
when he is or seems to be fully conscious of it; and 
when he is only dimly conscious of it, when he feels 
that he must presuppose some peculiar relation to the 
force to explain certain unusual and occasional powers 
which he cannot otherwise account for. 

First. It surely operates entirely without his con- 
scious cooperation, independent of any thought on his 
part, and this we call his instinctive action. Unless 
spirit operated in this way, man would not live at all, 
for he is continuously and incessantly protected and 
preserved by those things he does without any reflec- 
tion whatever. This operation is common to all animalg, 
animal-men, men and humans, since they all alike have 
a physical organism and nature. 

Second. It operates when he seems consciously to 
cooperate. The end seems to be consciously sought 
and consciously effected by him. This involves the 
conscious and independent possession of mind accom- 
panied by some sense of responsibility and duty, which 



110 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

is the status of reason. This characterizes the life of 
typical men. Instinct involves merely a sort of me- 
chanical reaction to immediate sensory impressions and 
the reaction is always correct and sure because the 
satisfaction sought is essentially simple and capable of 
direct and adequate attainment. The impulse seems 
literally to satisfy itself. As soon as he reaches the 
status of reason man is thereafter confronted by a 
dilemma. He ceases to live as an animal, merely in 
the present, but he remembers the past and anticipates 
the future. He tries to foresee consequences, seeks to 
form discriminating judgments so as to secure or avoid 
future results by the use of past experiences. He 
seems to be thrown upon himself, must guide his own 
course and achieve his own success or failure. Hence 
uncertainty, doubt and fear. Does he accurately recall 
the past; does he interpret it correctly and adequately; 
need he fear for the future; must he give up the present 
pleasure to escape future pain; will his gain hereafter 
pay for his present loss; can he plan more perfectly 
than he now does? This is the field of constant 
dilemma and too often of tragedy, from which man 
escapes only as he reaches a higher and subtler form 
in which spirit operates in him subconsciously, which 
is the status of the developed reason. This subcon- 
scious action only reaches effectiveness as it rises into 
the field of the ordinary and normal consciousness. It 
supplements and reinforces the ordinary mind and to 



SPIRIT. Ill 

it is due all our mental power that is extraordinary 
and otherwise imaccountable. 

Third. There in this way develops in some men 
such acute sensitivity, such delicacy of perception, 
such fulness of reflection, that we say they are possessed 
of a genius truly divine. In men of this type there 
seems to come at times a rush of elemental power which 
flows in its ot\ti way and to its own ends apparently 
independent of the man's conscious cooperation. It 
would seem as if he must indeed cooperate but it also 
seems as if he did so almost instinctively. This is 
spirit appearing as subconsciousness, as the secondary 
or exalted consciousness, which is the profoundest and 
most mysterious phase of man's existence, the most 
remarkable development which his physical organism 
permits. In some degree this comes to every man 
who earnestly and persistently seeks it. We call it 
the subconscious mind, for of it we are at the best but 
dimly conscious. We know nothing about it except 
that we are constantly aware of it as a power which 
somehow acts in us or through us. We only know it 
as a source of strength, a power that does really answer 
our queries, that does inspire us, does guide us and 
console us, and while we call the acts that we do our 
own we are well aware that aU that is notable is not 
so much our own conscious act as it is due to this power 
that seems to be behind us and at times to be within 
us. We puzzle over some question, try to discover 



112 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

what is the real, essential significance of some word or 
phrase and we seem to compass nothing. We give it 
up and, so far as we know, forget it and cease to think 
about it at all. Suddenly, at the least expected 
moment, we see clearly and distinctly the reply to our 
query. We write it down as rapidly as the pen will 
move and, when it is done, we cannot understand how 
it was accompHshed, for we are certain that, a few 
moments before, we did not know what we have just 
written. There are times when we cannot afterwards 
see how to change or improve what has been so written, 
times when it does not seem susceptible of modification. 
We know that we did not consciously think it out or 
discover it. It was certainly imparted to us by another 
mind or by a power akin to what we call our mind, a 
power which is in such relation to us and our mind 
that it can influence us, can use us and our mind directly 
and can do this without our conscious cooperation at 
the time. It also seems as if this power cannot act 
unless we, so to speak, pave the way for it. We must 
consciously gather the materials, must reach a status 
where we consciously see the problem and must con- 
sciously and earnestly desire a solution. Then in time 
the answer comes in a natural and normal way. 

The conditions under which spirit is thus manifested 
seem to involve three elements which must coexist. 
They are: (1) Belief or faith; (2) prayer; and (3) fast- 
ing. The seeker must believe that there is a problem 



SPIRIT. 113 

demanding consideration; that there is an answer or 
solution; that it is important and valuable and that 
he can probably secure it. He must believe that he 
has the power, or is in touch with power, that is ade- 
quate and he must so believe this as to continue to 
seek under great discouragement, without apparent 
success or even any immediate chance of it. He must 
have a vital belief, a living faith, and this is a funda- 
mental necessity, for without it man would make no 
effort at all. 

The second element is prayer, which is the persistent 
desire, the profound craving for the answer which shall 
enlighten. This at times so possesses the man's mind 
that he desires without ceasing, becomes so absorbed 
that his interest in the quest is almost a passion. 
This is the true meaning of the word 'Sprayer" and 
this is the true field within which it operates. It is 
the earnest desire to know which becomes an incessant 
quest, seeking within the limits of man's own conscious 
powers all available materials that seem to be perti- 
nent and then waiting for the finishing touch to be 
given by the subconscious mind, for a result to be 
certified out of the subconscious into the realm of the 
common consciousness. Prayer is thus altogether a 
psychical affair. It rests wholly in the mind and 
spirit and has nothing to do with the material universe 
or with its operations. Prayer thus conceived is the 
condition precedent to enlightenment. 



114 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

The third element is fasting, or sacrifice, which is 
the giving up or abstaining from all those things and 
ways of living which are inconsistent with the quest, 
leaving the man free from entanglements and diver- 
sions, free to devote such energy as he does possess 
to the end he desires to reach. It is thus that all 
notable work has been done in the intellectual and 
spiritual field. In science all genuine progress has 
been due to this. In art, music and literature it is 
the same. In all the higher phases of the industrial 
world as clearly as in philosophy and in all serious 
study of every sort distinguished success is due to the 
subconscious mind rendered available by genuine faith, 
incessant prayer and persistent fasting or sacrifice. 
"What is thus done is done nobly and wonderfully and 
it is as inexplicable to the doer as it is to every one 
else. All great work is done essentially in that way, 
without hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting. 
In the doers of the best there is an inner and involun- 
tary power which, in kind, approximates literally to 
the instincts of the animals; nay, it is certain that, in 
the most perfect human doers, their power is essentially 
an instinct much more remarkable than that of the 
animals — that a great singer sings not with less instinct 
than the nightingale but with more; and then it is 
more various, applicable and governable — that a great 
architect does not build with less instinct than the 
beaver or the bee but with more, with an innate 



SPIRIT. 115 

cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty and a 
marvelous ingenuity that improvises all construction. 
All great human work is dependent on this subcon- 
scious mind which is so analogous to instinct; and 
then it also rests on an amount of practice, of science 
and of imagination, disciplined by reflection, which 
the possessor knows to be incommunicable and the 
true critic to be inexplicable." 

It seems clear that the variation in the capacity of 
different men results from the varying degree in which 
spirit is present as consciousness, for all possibility of 
development is due to this. It is the added element 
of consciousness that differentiates reason from instinct, 
and so the effectiveness of reason depends on the degree 
and quality of the consciousness. Development always 
means increased sensitivity, profounder insight, power 
to discover what had hitherto been hidden from view. 
Faihng to develop the awakened spiritual side of his 
nature, man is exposed to a disaster which the mere 
animal need not fear. He becomes the victim of his 
emotions. Now, the emotions are not distinctive of 
man but are shared by him with all animals. They 
are reactions on experience, which come without volition 
on his part and they generally come with great force 
and intensity. Unchecked they will govern his action 
and color his entire life. Man's pecuHar problem is to 
control and utihze these emotions and impulses in the 



116 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

light of reason. Have them he must, for he is, on his 
animal side, a creature of impulse, emotion and instinct. 
To have them and to restrain, disciphne and at times 
coerce them is his spiritual task. Under given condi- 
tions he feels and cannot help feeling hatred and has 
an impulse to hurt, and even to kill, the cause of it. 
Reason, which is the spirit, says that he must, as a 
rule, overlook and forgive and, if he must needs resist 
and punish the offender, he must do it without any 
feeling of hatred or revenge, although, in such case 
of necessity, he must exert all his force, must strike 
hard and be effective. Again sympathy and love 
urge him to gratify some desire of a child or friend, 
but reason says that he must refuse because the grati- 
fication would work lasting injury and be not a kind- 
ness but a source of grief and trouble. Thus man's 
great struggle is with his impulses and emotions, and 
religion comes to demand that he scrutinize and study 
them in the light of reason. The emotional is there- 
fore on the animal side of man's nature, for the emo- 
tions are instinctive reactions of the natural man to 
be taken in hand and disciplined by the developed 
man. In the simple animal life, these emotions and 
impulses would be entirely right and normal, but in 
the complex Hfe of man, they necessitate reflection 
and, if not regulated, lead to disaster in innumerable 
cases. So far as he is an animal man is emotional 
and acts on impulse. So far as he becomes human 



SPIRIT. 117 

he pauses to reflect and often gives up his emotional 
impulse because it conflicts with his higher human 
purpose. Life is made up of a long series of emotions 
which are appeals naturally leading to impulsive 
action. This is the very stuff of which life consists 
and it is inevitable and unavoidable. A man's atti- 
tude towards this endless emotional chain determines 
his character and fixes his destiny. Religion cannot 
rest upon an emotional basis and be truly religious, 
but it is the very function of religion to regulate and 
discipline the emotions so as to lead to sane, righteous, 
human living. 

Every man seems to depend necessarily in some 
degree on the instinctive element in his nature and to 
require serious effort to develop reason to any valuable 
and effective degree. As soon as he reaches the 
stage of conscious inteUigence there stretches ahead 
of him an apparently illimitable field for its exercise. 
The use of the faculty always creates an increased 
sensitivity or receptivity, a profounder consciousness 
than he had before possessed. Psychical growth 
means reaching higher and higher degrees of intelligence, 
higher and higher degrees of sensitivity or capacity to 
receive and absorb knowledge. It is here and thus that 
what we call the subconscious mind operates. 

We conceive self as the result of the effort of spirit 
to incarnate itself in a living organism. At first there 



118 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

is no more than potential capacity, a mere chance of 
success hampered and likely to be defeated by the 
hmitations of the flesh. It seems as if spirit always 
manifests itself up to the limit of the existing oppor- 
tunity, which alone fixes and determines the degree 
in each case. Development means increased capacity 
to receive what is always at hand ready to be im- 
parted. If an individual becomes sensitive and recep- 
tive enough to go beyond the ordinary ranges of 
consciousness we say that he has thus developed, 
that he has reached a secondary or exalted conscious- 
ness, but what we really mean is that in him spirit 
has found a more complete expression of itself. Those 
who disclose this in an exceptional degree, whose 
powers seem at times to border on the marvelous, 
seem to have access to certain mysterious depths of 
man's psychical nature where He powers hidden 
entirely from most men. Genius is the highest degree 
in which the elemental spirit can be incarnated in 
man. It borders on what seems miraculous and is 
regarded as if its utterances were inspired from an 
external source. When it occurs the individual feels 
that he truly acts as if by inspiration, for he seems 
to see with eyes that are not his own and to speak 
with the voice of another. Man's highest and truest 
utterances have all been of this sort. He then seems 
to be for the moment in touch with pure inteUigence. 
The idea seems to come to the man, who seems to be 



SPIRIT. 119 

passive. In a moment he becomes conscious that he 
sees and knows what a moment before he did not see 
or know, and he is certain that in the interval he has 
done nothing consciously to promote the result. He 
secures credit for insight, penetration and acuteness 
and while ordinarily he takes the credit, he knows 
that he did nothing to justify those terms of praise, 
and he also knows that it was not, so far as he can 
see, in his power to have consciously so acted. Now 
the ordinary conscious self we may conceive as no 
more than a fragment of a larger and possible self. 
All psychical effort seeks more and more to reaUze 
this larger self, more and more to call into conscious- 
ness the powers that are not ordinarily realized. As 
the ordinary self is essentially a manifestation of spirit 
seeking adequate expression, and as what we call sub- 
conscious mind is regarded as ever stimulating the 
ordinary mind to more successful expression we may 
conceive the subconscious to be a mode of relation to 
the whole of the universal spirit, and then the larger 
self we speak of is merely the imiversal self. It is 
clear that the most astonishing results may become 
possible in the psychical field as we more effectively 
reach this subconscious mind. The so-called mind 
cures, hypnotism and psychotherapeutics may all, in a 
crude and imperfect way, point towards disclosures of 
power which may hereafter be resolved into expres- 
sions of psychic laws and be effectively utiUzed by 



120 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

men. If so it will all be due to this subconscious 
mind, which in such cases supersedes, for the time, 
that relatively slight manifestation which is ordinary 
and normal. To one who has never personally real- 
ized the inspired effectiveness growing out of relations 
to the subconscious, it probably can never be proven 
to exist at all. For such men it must be and remain 
sheer mysticism, while nevertheless it is without doubt 
the greatest and most significant fact in human his- 
tory. In the lives of all the most gifted men there 
have always been moments and hours when they 
have felt the access of this unusual degree of force 
and these they have called their inspired moments and 
hours. 

The three terms " instinct," '^ reason " and " subcon- 
sciousness " refer, therefore, to different degrees of the 
same force manifestations. Differences in the medium 
through which the force finds expression give the 
appearance of a difference in kind, but in reahty the 
force which enables the httle bee to do its work is 
the same in its essence as that which lies behind the 
mightiest creations of human genius. In the case of 
instinct the medium of expression cannot contribute 
to the result by any sort of conscious cooperation, 
and here we find that the force acts unerringly within 
its very limited field. While the field is small it is 
open, and while the agent does not help he does not 



SPIRIT. 121 

interfere and obstruct. As we reach the field of reason, 
where the agent is able to cooperate and seems to have 
some control of the force, there comes a possibility of 
interference and obstruction, which makes constant 
error inevitable. It seems as if the evolution towards 
a more perfect medium had reached a stage where the 
difiiculties almost destroyed the effectiveness of the 
force or at least so impaired it as to allow a vast number 
of mistakes. Then, as the agent develops his faculties, 
he seems to give the force a more perfect field of action 
and to that degree the errors become less until they, 
at times, disappear and the force operates with what 
approximates the accuracy of instinct without the 
usual limitation characteristic of that field. To secure 
the accuracy of instinctive action in a wide and limit- 
less field seems, indeed, to be the goal, the end aimed 
at in this evolution. Now the field of reason becomes 
effective in its highest degree only by reaching that 
measure of development which brings into play what 
we have called the subconscious mind. From the slight- 
est manifestation to the highest, it is all one force 
struggling for expression and, in each case, reaching 
such a degree as is permitted by the medium through 
which it necessarily acts. In this extremes meet. 
Instinct and the subconsciousness meet as alike using 
the actor as the passive medium for the expression 
of intelligence, the one in the limited and narrow field, 
the other in the spiritual and illimitable field. 



122 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

We say that when man discloses his characteristic 
powers it is due to the operation of spirit in and through 
him, but we do not mean that this occurs in such a way 
as to leave him a mere automaton. Herein lies the 
mysterious and fascinating problem of human per- 
sonality. As each man's sense of reality rests on his 
consciousness, and as that sense of reality is necessarily 
affected and indeed controlled by the degree and quality 
of his consciousness, it is not to be expected that all 
men would see alike. He who has had certain per- 
sonal experiences, who has power clearly to observe 
facts and an insight that opens up to him the signifi- 
cance of such facts, will inevitably regard the problem 
in a way that is simply impossible for another man 
who lacks these experiences and has less power of 
insight and analytic skill. Agreement between such 
differently equipped men is not to be expected and 
a failure to reach it should cause no surprise. There 
are many men whose life consists of what are essen- 
tially reactions on external stimuli, which are in a 
very slight degree affected by any conscious action 
on their part, so that they are mainly the result of 
their instinctive impulses. Spirit does not operate in 
them in any other sense than it does in the case of 
plants and animals, and this is because it cannot. To 
give it effective access and permit it to render active 
and useful assistance, which makes the individual 
appear to be its vehicle or medium, demands the 



SPIRIT. 123 

cooperation of the individual, and this he renders by 
patiently developing his nascent powers so as to reach 
and permit relations with spirit as a subconscious 
force. Without your cooperation spirit seems power- 
less to create that precise incarnation or developed 
individuality which should be the best result of your 
living under the exact conditions of your own personal 
environment. A new type or novel expression of force 
comes into being in the universe by your faithful co- 
operation and it is possible that this in some inscrutable 
way has a cosmic importance or value not suspected 
or discoverable by us. The personal element which 
is essentially the differentiating element is your con- 
tribution and can come alone from you. Your work 
is not achieved by your own self alone, nor is it the 
operation of spirit alone, but it involves a subtle and 
mysterious cooperation between these two elements — 
the universal and the individual — whereby they work 
as a unit, not only without ever destroying the indi- 
viduality of the man but even adding to it and causing 
a more profoundly differentiated product proportioned 
to the perfection of the cooperation. The more success- 
fully spirit flows into man, the more conspicuously it 
seems to inspire and use him, the more and not less 
individual he becomes, for to create just such new types 
and to rise into such novel expressions of itself seems 
to be the cosmic purpose. Not to crush or obliterate 
individuaUty but to evoke it; not to starve but to 



124 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

feed, nourish and develop it, is the very end sought 
by spirit. Man is called not to grow less but con- 
stantly to become more; not to be abashed and stand 
dumb but to rise to his true stature and speak; to feel 
the dignity of his own mission as a new and fresh expo- 
nent of the spirit and to realize that the more he is 
truly himself, the more he is serving the cosmic purpose. 
The more that spirit uses him, the more distinct and 
individual he will become. Self-surrender to spirit is 
thus the only road to spiritual greatness, for that alone 
results from the perfect and harmonious interplay 
between the two elements, whereby the individual ever 
takes on new power and grows towards the universal, 
and it is only as he does this that he becomes com- 
manding and great. Spirit seeks not conformity and 
sameness but the richness of multiplicity and diversity, 
of which it supplies the underlying bond of unity. 
Each individual who becomes a great personality em- 
bodies some creative and causal idea, precipitates the 
decisive movements and critical moments in history 
and is needful to the completeness and fulness of cosmic 
order. All true human dignity and enduring fame 
spring from this relation of the individual to the 
imiversal, towards which he constantly moves but into 
which he is never absorbed; by which he is inspired 
and exalted but never effaced or obliterated. Ele- 
mental spirit rising thus into differentiated individual 
expression continues by an infinite upward progression 



SPIRIT. 125 

without need of ever returning to or again being merged 
in the former elemental force of whose activity it is the 
result. 

In studying spirit man trusts his inferences and 
deductions because he comes to believe that the force 
which alone enables him to infer and deduce is that 
very force whose mystery he seeks to unravel and that, 
so to speak, it is merely guiding him to itself. His 
effort to understand it seems to be purely instinctive 
and the degree of success he attains seems to spring 
from the development in him of the deeper subcon- 
sciousness through which the force seems to reveal 
itself. Thus he sees that knowledge of spirit rests, 
Hke all other knowledge, on experience, is certified by 
consciousness, the same as everything else, and so no 
man can have any such knowledge who has not had 
the experience and does not have the consciousness. 
To men who should entirely lack this, spirit would be 
absolutely incomprehensible. 

Now to those men who discern spirit most clearly, 
the universe seems to be essentially psychical, because 
they cannot explain it without assuming intelligent, 
directive purpose, leading to the multitudinous recip- 
rocal adjustments which are absolutely necessary for 
the existence and maintenance of that harmonious 
whole which is called nature. Something analogous 
to man's psychical capacity must be presupposed as 



126 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

necessary for any adequate explanation, that is to 
say, something like the fundamental attributes of his 
intelligence, and to a wonderful and mysterious degree 
similar to his methods of operation. 

As the only men who can imderstand spirit are 
necessarily those who possess it in some degree, so the 
curiosity and interest felt in its problems and the 
effort to understand its nature and penetrate its secrets 
are inevitable incidents of its presence, while the absence 
of interest quite as certainly denotes the absence or 
weakness of spirit. Now it is a plain historical fact 
that this curiosity and interest is, and ever has been, 
almost universally present, in some degree, in nearly all 
men. Even the crude and primitive men have their 
ideas, which generally result in a state of abject fear, 
peopling the world with goblins, ghosts and most fan- 
tastic visions; leading to charms, amulets and sorcery. 
It is a very curious fact that the presence of spirit 
almost always inspires fear in those in whom it 
is but slightly or abnormally developed, yielding a 
mass of superstition of countless degrees and endless 
variations. 

There seems, also, to be a class of men who develop 
to a point where they throw off this fear and escape 
from any burden of superstition and yet do not develop 
enough to reach any adequate explanation or compre- 
hension of the matter, and these men, by their indiffer- 
ence and lack of responsiveness, seem to have really 



SPIRIT. 127 

quenched the spirit in their effort to escape from the 
field of superstitious fear. They escape from error 
without reaching truth. From a childish interpreta- 
tion they fly to no interpretation whatever, giving up 
all effort to grapple with the problem in its higher 
phases. Those who persevere and effectively develop 
their faculties seem to reach a status where the sense 
of fear has entirely disappeared, while there comes a 
perception of the identity between the force personally 
held in consciousness and a universal consciousness 
which, however dimly realized, is nevertheless so certi- 
fied to the individual that, to him, it becomes an ulti- 
mate reality, becomes a part of his knowledge, resting 
on his own experience and aided by all his observation 
and reflection. 

The life of man thus regarded is constant development 
of spirit as his innate capacity, involving ever-widen- 
ing knowledge, ever-growing wisdom, ever-deepening 
consciousness of the relation sustained personally 
to the mysterious universal force. Such is the true 
spiritual life, namely, development, increased power, 
deepened consciousness. From first to last it lies in 
the field of personal experience, personal reflection, 
personal consciousness. Nothing is essential except 
what a man can test by experience, realize in conscious- 
ness and adequately grasp by reflection. Whatever 
lies beyond or outside this field is truly non-essential 
to his spiritual life. 



128 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Man as an animal having a physical organization 
is subject to sensual propensities and various cravings 
and needs. Regulated and controlled, all these are 
necessary and wholesome, but so far as they dominate 
and control him he is not truly man but truly animal, 
for he is then the slave of those cravings and propen- 
sities which he instinctively follows and obeys, as does 
any other animal. If, however, he develops psychi- 
cally he becomes aware of an element in himself which 
claims ascendancy over these physical cravings, which 
urges him to believe, and to go on and prove, that he 
has within himself a force higher in kind than the phys- 
ical forces by which he seems to be solely environed. 
He becomes conscious of faculties and powers which 
cause him to become aware of principles of action 
which appeal to him as absolute and universal, which 
call upon him to regulate and control his physical 
nature. He becomes conscious of a sort of existence 
absolutely in contrast with the physical, and he realizes 
that it is a higher sort of existence. He does truly 
know that it is so. He may reach a point where he 
becomes possessed by ideals, the realization of which 
seems to compel him to secure entire ascendancy over 
his physical nature. He becomes conscious of person- 
ality, sees himself not merely as an animated body but 
as an independent, intelligent principle, using his body 
and all his physical powers to secure ends and reach 
results which are not physical. From the beginning 



SPIRIT. 129 

to the end, this is merely the development of immanent 
spirit. Born with potential capacity, his entire life 
record is no more than the history of what becomes of 
this. If it is extinguished at an early stage he remains 
mere animal. If he develops slightly he reaches the 
status of animal-man, while a higher stage discloses 
him as typical man and the highest and completest 
development raises him to the human class. The 
entire process is a constant growing or becoming along 
psychical lines. 

Man is at first appalled by his conception of infinite 
space, by the idea of immensity, by the thought of vast 
planets whirling through silent and immeasurable space. 
In its presence he at first regards himself as a mere 
atom of no sort of value or dignity, but on reflection he 
becomes aware that this feeling is the result of his own 
powers of imagination, his capacity to project himself 
out into the vast universe, and that such a power is 
greater than all that it contemplates. It is indeed 
absolutely different in kind. The day that a man can 
conceive of such things he is greater than the things, 
however great and impressive they may be. Greater 
than the most marvelous cathedral is the mind of man 
that can conceive and create the marvel and that, not 
content with the greatest achievements of the past, 
can dream and plan still greater marvels. Greater 
than the planet on which he lives is man, who, by think- 



130 THE GKEEK GOSPEL. 

ing, discovers the law of its motion, measures its size, 
gets its relative position as to sun, moon and other 
planets. Great as they are, these move obedient to 
that force which rises to consciousness in man. They 
are mere unconscious matter, absolutely outranked by 
intelligent, conscious mind. Spiritual man need never 
be abashed or astounded by the vastness of the 
material universe, or by the dynamic intensity of 
physical forces, for he has that within him which is 
greater, — spirit. He may calmly and serenely behold 
all the impressive manifestations of force, for he is 
himself the climax of those very manifestations. 

Until, however, the potential capacity develops, so 
that in his human estate he becomes an effective 
incarnation of spirit, he truly is no more than a bit of 
animated dust, no more than an insect, resting on the 
globe as it flies through illimitable space. Until such 
development he is conscious of nothing, knows nothing 
and ranks in no way above other forms of matter. It 
is in spiritual manifestations — in intelHgence, reason, 
consciousness — that he finds the solution of the riddle, 
of which indeed he knows nothing till he has the means 
of mastering it. In the use of his psychic force, in the 
study of this same force as it is, and has been for ages, 
manifested by the men of his race, he finds the only 
solution of the enigma of life. In the universe there 
is nothing greater than mind, nothing else indeed that 
is in the same class. The scientific method, the rational 



SPIRIT. 131 

use of experience, of inference from careful observa- 
tions, of hypothesis and verification — all is but the 
operation of spirit on its march towards the intellec- 
tual conquest of the world, never to be permanently- 
checked so long as the human race survives. Spirit 
created civiUzation, has maintained it, has caused it to 
progress and develop and will carry it on to its trium- 
phant conclusion. To have a firm belief that there 
will be progress along all the higher lines; that with 
this, and preparatory to it, the masses of men are 
steadily to receive more and more of the good things of 
life; to believe in the certainty of scientific development; 
in the growth of undogmatic religion; in a steady 
movement towards ordered and regulated freedom — 
is to believe in spirit as a real and vital force. 

As to its essential nature spirit is, and has ever been, 
the great enigma, which all philosophies and all theolo- 
gies have sought to comprehend and explain. In all 
the ages the men who have secured the most effective 
development have conceded as a self-evident fact the 
superiority of the psychical and have called it divine. 
It is thus that all ideas of divinity have come to man. 
The spiritual, rational or psychical side of life is the 
divine, for, when we penetrate to their essential sig- 
nificance, all these terms become interchangeable. 

Man will never, by any searching, find out what 
spirit essentially is, for it is the ultimate mystery. To 



132 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

penetrate to the secret of physical Ufe would not touch 
the matter in the least degree, for it is not a question 
of physical life but of the peculiar force resident in a 
peculiar form of that Hfe. It is not merely how a 
certain quantity of matter can be alive but how that 
living thing can have such a transcendent capacity as 
is displayed by man in his highest estate. Physical 
life is one manifestation of force and it is probable that 
all the laws of its genesis may be discovered by man, 
but spirit is another and essentially greater mani- 
festation, the presence of which may enable man to 
reach the secret of physical life, but his capacity to 
investigate is a vastly greater thing than the physical 
life itself. Spirit in man is the climax of force mani- 
festations. 



V. 

CHRISTUS. 

Spirit appears in man as potential capacity that may 
be developed under a fitting environment. This capacity 
is merely power to develop and grow, and always, in 
order to stimulate and nourish it, there is need of 
suitable conditions. If these are never supplied, then 
spirit can never disclose its presence, in any noticeable 
degree, any more than could a seed, which was never 
planted, reveal its peculiar and innate power. This 
law is uniform, constant and universal. 

We thus readily perceive that spirit, although im- 
manent in a child, is not sufficient to enable the child, 
living alone by itself, to progress and grow into the 
true human. Any other animal that we know would 
not be essentially different in its nature if it were brought 
up from its birth apart from all of its kind, but a child 
thus situated would become not a human type nor 
even a true man type, but rather a beast with human 
faculties no doubt hidden beneath but with no hope of 
ever developing those faculties into true humanity. 

We see, indeed, as a plain fact that development is 
entirely under the control of the influences exerted by 
the society in which the child may chance to live. These 



134 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

constitute the environment or conditions necessary 
for effective development. Were you to ask me to 
describe how to make an ear of corn, I could only direct 
you to get a kernel of corn as absolutely the first and 
most necessary step, then to plant it in proper soil and 
care for it sedulously, which would be merely placing 
in its true environment a kernel which potentially 
had in itself the whole secret and which was waiting 
for its opportunity to develop. Not otherwise, in the 
slightest degree, is the creation of an intelligent, reflect- 
ing man. You must have a child with the proper 
potential capacity, and as to the possession of such 
power by him you have, and can have, nothing to do 
any more than you can have anything to do with the 
kernel of com and its possession of peculiar properties. 
In each case, if we assume this initial potential capacity, 
a stimulating environment must do all the rest for the 
child as for the corn. 

But, it is asked, how did this environment ever come 
into existence? If a group of children, isolated strictly 
from all influences external to themselves, become mere 
savages, how did it ever happen that there were in 
this world anything but savages? If such children 
cannot to-day elevate themselves in any appreciable 
degree, how was it ever done by other similar children? 
How can the race have a power which no individual 
member possesses? The explanation is that the child 
has merely a potential capacity which at first develops 



CHRISTUS. 135 

very slowly, so that no group of children, if unaided, 
could advance very far in a single or even in a dozen 
generations. It may all be illustrated by the matter 
of language. Children, being isolated and never hearing 
a word spoken, certainly would not be able to develop 
a language of even the most rudimentary character. 
The sounds they would make would be mere gibberish. 
Yet the same children, placed in a proper social en- 
vironment, learn in a few years to speak the language 
that surrounds them and they learn by mere imitation. 
The child can thus gather in a brief period what it 
took the race ages to create and evolve. It enters 
into the fruitage of all the past labors of the race, 
acquiring easily what the race acquired slowly and pain- 
fully. The original progenitors of the child had no 
more capacity than the child has now, if as much, but 
they had that which enabled the evolution to begin 
and continue until it reached its present development. 
A child cannot create a language, yet his race can and 
has done so, but it may have taken ten thousand years 
to do it. What we have as language is therefore a 
racial product and is of inestimable value. To explain 
it we are forced to recognize the presence in man of 
a unique force possessed by him alone. The pure 
animal type never evolves anything of the sort in the 
same way or degree. All that constitutes our social 
and psychical environment has been laboriously evolved 
by the race in the same way that language was. 



136 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Hence, in order to secure any result in the lifetime 
of a single child, some external influence must cooperate 
to enable the child to use and develop its immanent 
capacity. This influence is exerted by society, that is 
to say, by collective humanity acting through parents, 
preachers, teachers and friends; through churches, 
schools, courts of law, books and all the multifarious 
agencies of society for reaching and affecting the in- 
dividual, who may now readily cover in the course of 
some hours' reading an extent of knowledge w^hich it 
has taken the race long centuries to acquire. 

Thus collective humanity is the real and effective 
cooperator with spirit in countless ways, and this 
agency is symbolized as Christus. A person, who 
develops into true human, becomes an incarnation of 
certain qualities, becomes an example disclosing those 
qualities in a living organism which serves as a guide 
to those who have the capacity to appreciate it. Such 
a person has power to stimulate, to inspire, to quicken 
the ambition and impulses of another less developed 
person of his own type. Each individual is potentially 
human by reason of the presence of spirit. If this 
develops and he becomes human in the high sense of 
that term, then he becomes a part of the Christus, 
that is, he becomes an example to others, a visible 
incarnation of that character or type of Hving which 
is called Christian. God immanent becomes at last 
God individualized or incarnated and the sum of all 



CHRISTUS. 137 

these individuations is called the Christus. The true 
human is thus God incarnated, each individual being 
partial, incomplete and fragmentary, but the sum of 
all is the degree of fulness in which at the time God 
has found visible spiritual expression. Relatively to 
you, Christus is God as manifested in all humanity 
outside of yourself, that is to say, God as external, 
while spirit is that manifestation of God of which you 
are conscious within yourself, that is to say, God inti- 
mate and personal to you. In a proper relation to 
Christus lies all your chance or hope of growth into the 
truly human Hfe, which is figuratively spoken of as 
the hope of glory. It is only as the spirit rises to con- 
sciousness in a man that he can respond to the Christus, 
or the spirit as it is in others. This affords the only 
basis for reaching and influencing him. All such men, 
who mutually influence each other, are brothers in the 
unity of this common spirit. Every true human life 
is thus a visible, concrete expression of a spiritual 
idea, and Christus becomes a term denoting the eternal 
force as manifested in all true human character, 
embracing every man who has been or is good, noble, 
pure and true from the beginning of history to this 
very day. It sweeps in every sublime and glorious 
human character in every age and every race. 

The influence of social environment operates as a 
pressure tending to force a man out of himself into the 



138 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

larger life of the whole society in which he lives, whereby 
he insensibly obeys its dictates and becomes what it 
makes of him. Its ideals, maxims and aspirations 
become his by mere absorption. In a developed society 
there are countless environments existing side by side, 
all colored in a degree by the dominant note of the 
total environment and yet all essentially distinct. 

In one of these each man lives and that environment 
he reflects in his main ideal and character, while he 
is necessarily affected, in a measure, by that greater 
and more complex environment which is the product 
of all forces as they clash together. Each man is thus 
the reflection of his special and general environment. 
His individual innate capacity to be acted on, his 
sensitivity, his power to absorb and take as his own 
possession, determines the degree in which he represents 
and incarnates all this. 

The highest spiritual environment, which is the most 
distinct and apart from all the others, lies essentially 
in all the noblest literature of all the past and present. 
It is kept alive, increased and transmitted from age 
to age, by all those institutions which by its own in- 
herent energy have been called into existence for its 
service. It is always held and guarded as a sacred 
depositum by those living men who have been nourished 
by it and have become visible incarnations of it. The 
total spiritual environment, which regards not time 
nor place nor individuals, but is the product of 



CHRISTUS. 139 

all times, all places and all men who in the past or 
present have incarnated and expressed it, is the essential 
Christus, while the men, who now incarnate and express 
it, are collectively the living Christus. This essential 
Christus, the total expression of the human soul in 
all history, is a vital force molding and fashioning the 
present. It is the priceless heritage of every successive 
generation and to this each new age adds its con- 
tribution of psychical expression and passes on. 

The one controlling mission and work of all the ages 
has been the creation and development of the essential 
Christus. All else is subsidiary and ephemeral, im- 
portant only as it helps or hinders this, for the end 
of all social living, the essential purpose for which 
all institutions are created, is to render possible the 
individual whose intelligence has been aroused, whose 
will has been disciplined, whose conscience has been 
enlightened. Such a man, strong and sane, positive 
and aggressive, free to initiate and to carry to com- 
pletion, constantly developing power to act wisely, 
as he ever grows in self-control and in the more perfect 
use of his faculties to psychical ends, — this is the truly 
religious man, the ripe fruit of all the past and present. 
He it is that is saved, redeemed, regenerated and filled 
with grace, for he is child of the eternal spirit. This 
it is that he manifests and incarnates. The rise of 
these men is the rise of the Christus and so far as they 
influence and control society it is human and Christian. 



140 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Man owes his development to the pressure of this 
universal or collective humanity on his individual 
nature. He is no sooner born than the world around 
him begins to act upon him. Its action lasts to the 
end of his life and enters into everything. All that 
he can truly call his own is his energy, his vigor and 
his will. All his knowledge or wisdom is simply that 
portion of the world's accumulation which he has been 
able to absorb and make his individual possession. 
To him at birth is offered this wisdom of the ages. 
It is offered freely, without money and without price. 
All he has to do is to accept it and by persistent effort 
make it his own, without other limit than that fixed 
by his capacity. Intellectually and spiritually he is 
heir to all the preceding races of men. He inherits 
the ideas of all men and of all centuries. They are his 
as truly as if he were sole heir. He may enter into and 
absorb as his own the result of all their strivings, their 
questionings, observations, experiences and reflections 
made for ages before he was born. 

This is the noble heritage of the individual man, and 
the entire value of life to him is determined by the 
manner in which he accepts it, the extent to which he 
works to appropriate it. Of himself, standing isolated 
and alone, he can compass nothing. He must reach 
out and come in touch with this mind of collective 
humanity which is to him none other than the mind 
universal — Christus — the revealed mind of God. He 



CHRISTUS. 141 

compasses this by studying all that has been said and 
done by the human race. As by study and reflection 
he comes into harmony with this, absorbing and making 
it a part of himself, he takes on power and becomes 
great, noble, worthy, commanding. This is his only 
source of psychical food, inspiration and stimulus. 
Without this he starves and dies intellectually and 
spiritually. He enters into harmonious relation with 
God by coming into such relation with Christus, the 
collective mind of the race. So far as the individual 
is concerned all that he knows of God is acquired in 
this way. If he but opens his mind to the literature 
of the great past he is touched by countless invisible 
and immortal influences. Into him flows the stream 
that had its rising in a thousand different springs all 
coming from one common source. He thus enters into 
relations with all those who have gone before him. 
Across intervening centuries they touch and inspire 
him, rousing him to zeal and activity, quickening his 
mind by countless suggestions. 

Man, pervaded by spirit, may be compared to a 
magnetized bar of iron. If that be thrust into a heap 
of sand which contains iron filings scattered through 
it, though they are hardly discernible to the eye, they 
are attracted and held together. The mere iron bar 
in its natural state would have no such power, but, 
when permeated by that subtle force that renders it 



142 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

a magnet, the isolated atoms are gathered together 
until it is encrusted and hidden thereby. So a man, 
crude and undeveloped, selects and appropriates nothing, 
whatever wealth of ideas may be within his reach; 
but, spiritualized and thrust into the literature of 
humanity and into touch with its living exponents, 
he absorbs and draws unto himself the scattered bits 
of truth until his whole thought is energized and trans- 
formed by what it has attracted. It is all due to the 
subtle force which is the cause and the explanation 
of the attraction and coherence. Without this force, 
which is spirit, and this environment into which he 
is thrust, which is the Christus, the man is powerless 
and dead as is the bar of iron in its natural condition. 
Man becomes dynamic as he is filled by spirit, and not 
otherwise, and in proportion as he becomes thus ener- 
gized and filled with power he becomes and is a part of 
the living Christus. 

As the magnet, however powerful, can only attract 
to itself its own kind, so the Christus can only operate 
on individuals who are already sufficiently developed 
to be at least conscious of its appeal, and this adequate, 
though minimum development, is always the result 
of education and training, using those terms in their 
broadest and most inclusive meaning. With reference 
to a multitude of wooden objects the magnet is not 
effectively present, as such, but, relatively to them, 
it is merely an inert piece of metal. It is present as 



CHRISTUS. 143 

a magnet, as the center of a field of electrical force, 
only to those bodies which are capable of receiving the 
reaction of that force, which means power to respond to 
its magnetic appeal. It is ready to operate, and it will, 
and indeed it must, operate whenever it comes within 
range of what has a true affinity for it and never other- 
wise. Until such objects come within the field of its 
influence the power of the magnet cannot in any degree 
be demonstrated. Nor can the iron filings, although in 
every way fitted by nature to respond, prove this as 
a fact until they come into proper relation to a present 
magnet. Therefore the constant aim of the Christus 
is to train, educate and develop men so as to bring 
more and more of them within the radius of its effective 
influence, which means more and better civihzation 
as the masses of men are uplifted and in any degree 
spiritualized. Such extension of itself, implying growth 
of its power by wider diffusion, is the divine mission of 
the Christus. 

By the term '' Christus '^ we have designated that frac- 
tion or minority of mankind which represents all that 
is noblest and best, the flower, the crowning glory of 
the race. We say that wherever there is a true, good 
and pure character; wherever there is a high and noble 
ideal; wherever there is compassion, justice and 
equity; wherever, finally, there is a human influence 
that uplifts and redeems — there is a disclosure of the 



144 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Christus, who thus is not an isolated historical character 
but a racial possession from the beginning of history 
until this day. 

The individuals who, taken collectively, constitute 
the figurative body of this Christus and render it a 
present and vital force are therefore called Christians, 
a term which indicates the possession of true human 
qualities and characteristics. When intelligently used the 
words ^'Christian" and ^^ human" are interchangeable, 
and of late years there has been a tendency towards 
the perception of this by multitudes of men. 

Whatever may be the creeds and formulas of men, 
whatever may be their theories and dogmas, there is 
something in the man who has become human which 
compels him to see and feel his essential kinship with other 
humans despite all social, racial or ecclesiastical badges 
and barriers of separation. He instinctively feels 
that these are artificial and recognizes the community 
of spirit as alone real and true. Thus it comes to pass 
that those, who formally exclude each other by their 
public declaration of faith, privately fraternize on 
terms of the freest mutual recognition of the essential 
unity of the spirit in each. Thus, as the human element 
in the character of individuals becomes more real and 
true, this tendency operates with more and more force 
and breaks down more and more the artificial barriers 
ignorantly created between good and true men. Thus 
the increase of the genuine spirit of humanity will 



CHRISTUS. 145 

in the end prove destructive of all institutions based 
on formulas which seek to separate and divide those 
who are truly members of one family, particles of one 
body. 

This meaning of the term ^' Christian " has imiversal 
application reaching all ages and all coimtries, and 
always essentially designating one. quality of Hving, 
which is not tested by cleverly drawn creeds or by any 
artificial or arbitrary rules whatever, but is felt and 
recognized in that subtle and mysterious way in which 
always and everywhere spirit responds to spirit by the 
law of its own peculiar nature. He who is human knows 
when he meets a disclosure of the human spirit and he 
does not need any certificate from any one to tell him 
that it is so. Nor can any declaration by any authority, 
however imposing, prevent or control his inner con- 
sciousness of the fact, however much, in his public 
behavior, he may feel compelled to bow to the dictates 
of such authority. It is a sign of our imperfect humanity 
that so many deny in public what they so freely concede 
in private. 



VI. 

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 

We have considered Christus as an essential element 
in the development of the race, operating always, 
whether recognized by man or not, as the cause of 
progress towards human conditions. Christus is in fact 
ever present as a subtle, psychical activity and tends 
to lead the individual to a degree of development where 
he may see the true law of that development and so be 
able consciously to cooperate with it for his own good. 

When man reaches some perception of the truth 
and begins to discern the law of his life he uses symbols 
that may serve to represent it and bring to the mind 
its sahent features. He creates an ideal, typical person 
and develops figures of speech to symbolize and typify 
the underlying truth, expressing abstract thoughts 
in living personal terms, gathering whole volumes of 
utterance into a word or phrase which shall connote 
and imply the entire system of thought. 

As convenient and even necessary as symbols, types 
and figures have been, their use has always been attended 
by great danger. They have usually been perverted, 
have often led to a worship of the symbol instead of 
an intelligent perception of the idea symbolized. They 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 147 

have often become so invested with a halo of super- 
stition that the original idea has been lost from sight. 
There would, however, seem to be no reason why this 
should always be so. Man ought certainly to be able 
to personalize his ideals without losing the substance 
and underlying reality. He ought to be able to use all 
the resources of art, so as to bring the truth more 
forcibly to the mind without ever forgetting what that 
truth really is. These resources ought to aid him to 
feel the truth in a way that mere prosaic utterance 
can never do and yet they should never substitute 
imagination and fancy for the truth itself. So far as 
it does this, all symbolism is an evil. 

The constant observation by man of the great spectacle 
of human life, forcing him to think of all that it mani- 
fests in the way of powers and qualities, leads him 
inevitably to see in all this the presence of certain 
very remarkable fixed and permanent elements, and 
these in time fashion themselves into an ideal person- 
ality, which stands as the embodiment of these remark- 
able racial powers and qualities. All human life thus 
tends to fuse itself into one ideal person, who exemplifies 
or typifies all that has been manifested by countless 
individuals living in all countries and all centuries. 
The steady persistence of the type, despite the constant 
shifting of the individuals who give it visible expression, 
seems to constitute a reality to which we may give a 



148 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

name which shall connote and imply, in the way that 
all symbols do, these permanent racial qualities and 
powers. The Christus becomes thus typical of all 
that has been represented by the human minority 
throughout the ages. It connotes all its aspirations; 
its heroic devotion to duty; its countless sacrifices 
made to further worthy and noble purposes; its sorrow 
over the evil and sin in the world and its effort for 
the amelioration of conditions. We see human beings 
going into plague-stricken regions, facing death in its 
most repulsive forms, seeking to relieve the misery and 
woe of degraded men. We see them enduring ostracism, 
persecution, and laying down hfe itself in countless 
cases through fidelity to ideals. We see them thrown 
into dimgeons, burnt at the stake, hunted down like 
wild beasts by cruel, passionate, vindictive men, acting 
in the name of religion, and all because this minority 
represented the craving of humanity for freedom to 
develop its inherent capacity and work out its divine 
mission. We see that it is this human minority that 
in all ages has counseled, admonished, rebuked and 
consoled the world. It has been the mouthpiece of 
wisdom and truth, the angel of mercy, the herald of 
righteousness, the beacon light amidst the angry and 
dangerous waves of passion and appetite. 

Read the record of humanity and see how steadily, 
everywhere and in all ages, this pathetic element appears; 
how persistent and continuous in its manifestation, 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 149 

despite all its defeats and sufferings, and we finally 
create an ideal character which sums this all up and 
typifies the maximum of all human endeavor, — an ideal 
impossible of full realization by any single individual 
but lofty and subHme, a racial creation, a racial ideal, 
a racial reality. 

Millions of true humans have contributed by their 
heroic exertions, by their patient development of the 
capacity immanent in them, by their pathetic endurance 
of the contumely and scorn of men, and it is to them that 
we are indebted for that ideal which we call the Christus. 
Countless lives sacrificed voluntarily on the altar of 
high ideals give to this name its profound reality. 
It connotes all that is most valuable and precious in 
the world, all civilization, law, literature, science and 
religion; all that is refined, kindly, generous and sympa- 
thetic. It has more meaning than any other single 
word in the language of man. To see its full significance 
and feel its implications would adequately reward 
years of study and thought. 

The birth and growth of the Christus is really the 
rise of the human spirit shown in the first dim disclosures 
and in the slow development of the spiritual element 
in the life of man. Of all this, history is the partial 
and incomplete record whereby, however, we clearly 
see that spirit is not a power exercised over man but 
in man and through man. Spirit slowly evolved its 
own cooperative agency, so that Christus may be figura- 



150 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

tively said to be '^bom of the spirit" in a way which 
is hid in those dim regions before history existed. Nor 
did Christus spring from any other element than spirit, 
and so it is true, figuratively, that he had no father, 
for our present human status is purely the result of 
psychical activity without need of any extraneous 
aid to explain the facts. Starting with the tiniest and 
slightest sort of manifestation it has all unfolded in 
one unbroken continuity of psychical activity to this 
very day, containing in itself the law of its own 
progress. 

Mankind may be regarded as a colossal imit, growing 
out of the unquestioned power of the race to gather 
and absorb into its present life the results of the past, 
which are thus perpetuated. This is no mere figure of 
speech but a brief statement of a very comprehensive 
fact. Mankind is a single continuous stream of con- 
scious being. The successive generations of men are 
days in the life of this colossal racial man. As the 
particles of the individual man^s body are constantly 
changing, without disturbing or breaking the con- 
tinuity of the individual existence, so individuals 
are born into this racial body, form a part of it for a 
few years and, dying, pass out of it, while all the time 
the race maintains its organic unity and solidarity. 
The individual contributes the result of his life work; 
the race absorbs it and is in some degree affected by it. 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 151 

The man dies but his work Uves on, for the heir of all 
his intellectual and spiritual wealth is the race. 

The discoveries, inventions and enterprises of every 
sort in the different epochs of history are the work of 
this colossal man. The philosophic speculations, the 
scientific theories, the ethical and religious analyses of 
the problems of experience, are his thoughts. History is 
his autobiography. The state of society discloses his 
manners, his temperament and character. He grows 
in knowledge and in visible size just as the indi- 
vidual man does. He had his days of infancy when 
he had no thoughts, no works, no capacity and no 
character. He grew slowly and improved just as any 
child does and for the same reason, because, like the 
child, he could to-day keep the results attained yester- 
day and thus had always a consciousness of racial 
unity linking all ages and centuries with the latest. 

He has made and continues to make his mistakes 
and blunders, suffers because of them, tries to find out 
the causes and hereafter to avoid a repetition. He 
has had his hallucinations, his mad and erratic fancies, 
his outbursts of chivalry, his illnesses and diseases, 
sometimes serious, acute and dangerous; and at all 
times he is suffering from some indiscretion and lack 
of judgment. After all these centuries he has only 
reached the early stage of adolescence. He is now 
vigorous, keen, headstrong, impulsive, enterprising 
and at times shows a really sane and intelligent spirit. 



152 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

What he has done promises glorious things for the 
future when he shall have reached the stage of racial 
manhood. 

As a child has for many years no appreciable intellect 
or spiritual force, so it was with this colossal racial 
child. He had, however, the germ which would develop 
under the right conditions, at the right time and in a 
normal way. The rise of all this in the colossal racial 
man is the rise of Christus, who typifies the soul and 
spirit, the head and the heart of the race, connoting 
all the visible manifestations of its psychical capacity. 
''To some this colossal man, this aggregate person- 
ality, may seem to be merely a figure of speech, and 
yet that alone is the personality which, in any true 
sense, may be said to exist in the image of God. Not 
this or that individual man but the universal manhood 
with its imity in its multitudinousness, its imbroken 
continuity, its self-related and various internal life, 
its incessant movement and ever-expanding vitality, 
its unity and yet its manifold diversity, its complexity 
within its simplicity — that is the man existent as God's 
image, the study of which may open upon the mind 
of the individual some conception of the divine." 

The spiritual part of the race is humanity. All 
else passes away leaving no record. History is made on 
its nobler side by a small cluster of men. The rest 
only live and die mere pawns on the world's chess- 
board. In each generation a few men write the lit era- 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 153 

ture, do the great deeds, utter the inspiring thoughts, 
sound the key-note of the day and stand in all sub- 
sequent ages as its representative men. They enrich, 
expand and make more vivid the world's vision of 
the Christus. They are the soul of their generation, 
the vital and spiritual element without which the man, 
colossal as he is, would be merely animated flesh. 

Christus also stands for another idea, which for ages 
has been referred to as the Messiah. This is not a 
mere fancy, a bit of poetry or imagination, but a reality 
which underlies all our life and without which man's 
days would be almost unbearable. It is not a dream or 
a vision, but is an element of our daily life, ever present 
even with those who do not clearly analyze their environ- 
ment so as to discern its true significance and contents. 
Always the individual in his hours of perplexity and 
danger looks for the fellow-man who shall deliver him, 
who shall say the right and the wise word, shall give 
the sage counsel, shall evolve the clever plan whereby 
the present evil shall be removed. Realizing his own 
personal weakness, he still feels that somewhere there 
is the man who is strong, the man who understands, 
who can explain, who can so act as to save him and 
his. He beheves that somewhere, among all his fellows, 
this man is concealed. If he could only find him all 
would be well, and so he seeks the priest or doctor or 
lawyer or noted expert or wise and judicious friend 



154 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and, despite his failure to realize all his hopes and 
secure all that he desires, he still gets enough to keep 
alive his faith and make him just as expectant the next 
time he is in trouble. As the years roll by, men see 
that this call upon their fellows yields more and more 
results and more and more justifies this faith. 

This feehng in each man that in his fellows he has an 
imfailing refuge and an inexhaustible store of strength 
which shall somehow be equal to all his emergencies 
results, in the race as a whole, in the idealization of 
this faith, in a sort of instinctive belief, which becomes 
a steady expectation of some one who shall do great 
things for man in his wretchedness. Every problem 
seems to be merely waiting for the man who shall 
come and solve it. Every fact seems to be merely 
waiting for its interpreter. Every disease seems only 
to await the patient investigator who shaU penetrate 
its secret, conquer it and destroy one more enemy of 
man. Everywhere government is merely waiting for 
the men who shall place it on an ideal and final basis 
for the common good of all. Men feel that in some way 
evil is to be overcome and all look eagerly for those 
who, it is felt, are certainly coming with ability enough 
to compass it. Such is the common attitude of men 
in daily life. All, however depressed, are looking for 
great results in the future from men more capable than 
themselves, upon whose efforts they blindly pin their 
faith. They do not know even the names of these men, 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 155 

but they are sure that somewhere they are working 
and that some day conditions will be made better 
because of it. In all this really lies the hght, the hope 
and the solace of man in his misery. 

This popular feeling inevitably gives rise to the 
racial ideal corresponding to it, which is all summed 
up in the words, ''the coming of the Messiah, who is 
the Christus.^' This connotes a great reality and rightly 
it is ineradicable from the minds of men, for it is really 
a faith in humanity and rests on an instinctive per- 
ception of the as yet absolutely unfulfilled powers 
that he in human kind. The expectation is of those 
great things yet to come from man's intelligent use of 
his mysterious capacity. The commonest man feels 
this and blindly pins his hope on it. However he 
distrusts his own powers, he still beUeves in the illimit- 
able resources of his race. 

The Messiah has thus always been coming, is now 
coming and ever will be coming, more and more justi- 
fying the faith and expectancy of men. This coming 
is an age-long process. The Messiah is as much an 
idea of to-day as it was thousands of years ago, and so 
it will ever remain. However far we progress there 
will always be the illimitable beyond. However good 
we become there is always the better ahead of us. 
Whatever man compasses there will always remain the 
greater thing yet to be expected, the clearer thought, 
the saner philosophy, the more acute analysis, the more 



156 THE GREEK GOSPEL 

profound interpretation. That humanity will move 
steadily in this direction^ and more and more manifest 
itself as the light and glory of the world, is wrapped up 
in the symbolic language '' the coming of the Messiah/' 
which connotes a permanent factor in our life, the factor 
of hope and faith in the as yet undeveloped possi- 
bilities of humanity. 

Christus is the true and only Judge of the world, 
connoting and typifying the highest ethical standard 
existent in the sensitive, educated and spiritually 
developed portion of the race. The approval of our 
conduct by Christus is merely the verdict of those 
who represent to us the noblest human qualities, the 
verdict of the virtuous minority, intelligent, earnest, 
discriminating and judicial. This we seek, while we dis- 
regard the clamor of the uninstructed and passionate mul- 
titude. Every court of law is in theory the judgment bar 
of the human conscience, where Christus should preside. 

The term also typifies that ceaseless human effort 
through all the ages to instruct the ignorant, to dis- 
cipline and develop the powers of the child, to quicken 
into life the dormant spirit, to transmit to the future 
the intellectual heritage of the past. Every school and 
place of learning is a nursery of the spirit conceived and 
maintained by Christus as the Teacher of the race. 

He also typifies that human sympathy and com- 
passion which ever seeks to reclaim the erring; which 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 157 

in the midst of brutal degradation ever pleads for 
chastity, purity and temperance; which ever seeks 
to reheve suffering and distress even when caused 
by folly, perversity and the clearest disobedience of 
advice kindly and intelligently given. Every hospital 
and home of refuge stands in the name of Christus, 
the Healer and Consoler, who connotes all the 
philanthropists, all the medical and hygienic investi- 
gators and teachers, all the noble and devoted army 
of doctors and nurses. 

Christus also typifies the entire intellectual life of the 
race on its nobler side, appearing as man's Guide to all 
wisdom and truth, being the glorious company of the 
philosophers, the patient truth seekers in the fields of 
science, the conscientious historians, the students seek- 
ing after the laws of social, political and industrial life, 
aiming at the amelioration of man's condition. They 
are all manifestations of one spirit. Each, by following 
the bent of his genius, is causing the world to have 
more knowledge, deeper convictions, profounder ideas. 

All this becomes possible because man has, so to 
speak, spiritual eyes which enable him to discern moral 
and spiritual things. These eyes need the light whereby 
they may become able to exercise their proper and 
normal functions. Christus is the spiritual Light of 
THE World. Each true human being is thus a part 
of the light, a candle of God, being the only agency by 
which the divine radiance is spread abroad. 



158 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

The man who from his birth should be secluded 
from all his kind might indeed have a spiritual eye, 
but he would sit in darkness until he were led out into 
contact with his race, that is, until he were brought 
to Christus. To him this would be salvation. He that 
had sat in darkness would have seen a great Ught, and 
this hght would necessarily be education, moral training 
and discipline coming to him at the hands of his own 
fellow-men, from whom until then he had been sepa- 
rated. Salvation would be union with the human part 
of his race, separation from which meant for him in- 
tellectual, spiritual and social death. Whatever fellow- 
man rescued him from his seclusion and educated him 
would truly be his savior and redeemer. 

Every child at birth is helpless and depends on 
others for all his early guidance and training. If he 
falls into the hands of those who are depraved, vicious 
and ignorant, who selfishly abuse him for their own pur- 
poses, he is figuratively in the hands of the Devil and 
may grow into conditions of life which constitute Hell. 
The child who is carefully trained, who is brought into 
touch with the noblest social influences, who is educated 
so as to be able to absorb the world's best thought, who 
is confronted with the highest ideals of his race, is truly 
in the hands of Christus, as his Savior, and may grow 
into those conditions of life which constitute Heaven. 

Christus thus symbolizes Opportunity for escape 
from animalism into the human or heavenly conditions, 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 159 

the chance to develop and grow from crudeness to 
the full fruitage of high character. The three con- 
ditions of such development are these: That the child 
shall have an innate capacity to cooperate, a certain 
receptivity or sensitivity due to the presence of spirit; 
that he shall then have the opportunity to cooperate 
by having a suitable environment; and then that he 
shall actually cooperate. If any one of these three 
elements be entirely absent there will and can be no 
development. Humanity assumes that each child 
has the capacity, seeks to lead him to Christus or to 
present to him the opportunity and then is forced to 
let him work out his own salvation. 

We may offer to a man all wisdom, but if by his 
personal endeavor he will not or cannot appropriate 
and absorb it or a part of it, then for him it is really 
non-existent. He shaU sit in darkness though he be 
surrounded by a great light, for none can save him. 
He must arise and by his own effort secure the prize. 
He must at least be able to accept what is offered. He 
must be able to assimilate and digest, for none other 
may do this for him. Children, however, as a class are 
indisposed to all such exertion, so that it is almost 
universally true that a child starts on the path of de- 
velopment and pursues it for some time solely because 
of the pressure, stimulus and inspiration furnished by 
its immediate environment. Except, then, as Christus 
in the guise of parent, teacher and friend takes the 



160 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

child and leads it, there is, as a rule, little use made 
of innate capacity and little benefit received from an 
environment, however rich and admirable it may be. 

One of the permanent elements in all social life in 
all ages is the struggle of the ideal to assert itself and 
live in the presence of an arrogant ecclesiasticism, 
a selfish commercialism and a coarse materialism. 
Everywhere the best seems to have been persecuted 
because it was the best, because it rebuked this arro- 
gance, selfishness and coarseness of man. This shows 
us Christus as suffering, as persecuted, as dying igno- 
miniously by the hands of men who could not see the 
beauty of the ideal. Countless times has this occurred. 
Countless human lives have paid the price of human 
progress. This has been one of the most distinctive 
characteristics of true human experience and so 
Christus Dolorosus, suffering, lonely and isolated, is 
a most pathetic figure, truly symbolizing so many men 
who always and everywhere have faced the penalty of 
their excellence. 

There are times when every man who has devoted 
himself to the higher interests of life feels ashamed 
in the presence of triumphant and arrogant worldli- 
ness, feels that his culture and his love of the good and 
beautiful is less effective and less productive than the 
more common-place striving for political, social and 
ecclesiastical honors. In all this it is the Christus of 
whom he is ashamed, and, when he is taunted by those 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 161 

who are really flippant and superficial, he is often 
inclined to forget this and to deny his allegiance to 
the ideal which has been in very truth his Lord and 
Master. Every man has at times felt this shame and 
has thus denied his Lord — a pitiable surrender to 
the vulgar crowd, but he cannot on occasion help it 
because he is so conscious of his isolation, so impressed 
by a sense of his weakness as he stands alone against 
such an aggressive mass of men, united by appetite 
and passion, by current ambitions and the prevalent 
spirit of greed. Popular success, and the consequent 
applause of one's fellows, is, and ever will be, dear 
to every man and the loss of it will not be met without 
pain. It is this very pain that is symbolized by the 
Cross and it is necessarily felt by every man in pro- 
portion as he is a part of the Christus. It is indeed the 
sight of this Cross that makes cowards of us all. It is 
no dream but it is one of the great facts in the history 
of the world. 

Not in one place alone but everywhere, not only in 
all the past but in the present, we may see true human 
heroes who have been despised and rejected of men. 
They are the martyrs of philanthropy, the martyrs of 
science, the martyrs of literature, the martyrs, indeed, 
of progress in all the higher walks of life, for, by being 
loyal to the very best that is in him, a man is forced 
to antagonize certain ideas which are dominant in his 
day and, for this, he must in some way suffer. This, 



162 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

then, is his cross which he must bear as the result of 
his ideals. If he is not actively persecuted he at least 
stands as an alien, isolated because he is out of sympathy 
with his immediate environment. Progress has been 
marked by a series of men who have been, so to speak, 
crucified by their fellows but reverenced and followed by 
the generations that came after. The light had shone in 
the darkness and the darkness had comprehended it not. 

Christus is entitled to the Kingship of the world and 
this primacy or headship flows from the very nature 
and constitution of the race. The only righteous rule 
is that of the human element and this alone truly 
makes for man's happiness, so that the hope of all 
men, if they could but see this, would be for the ultimate 
victory of the human spirit which shall conquer the 
passions of men and estabhsh justice, reason and peace. 

All history shows a very slow but a very steady and 
persistent tendency in this direction. Social progress 
has been marked by constantly broadening rules of 
conduct. Ethical ideals steadily become more exalted, 
are more and more valued for their own sake and tend 
to become more and more a definite and powerful social 
impulse. The regeneration of the race lies entirely 
in the fiinal recognition of Christus as Rex et Impera- 
TOR. Man ignorant, prejudiced and selfish, so far as 
he now sits on the throne, is merely a usurper of pre- 
rogatives not truly his and so his reign has been, is 
now and always will be marked by corruption, turbu- 



CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. 163 

lence and disaster. Thus far the true King has in a 
large degree been an exile from the seats of power. 
Deposed by the passions of men the true human is 
forced to behold a carnival of selfishness which he is 
powerless to prevent. 

Misunderstood, unappreciated, jeered at, as he may- 
be by the vulgar mob, crowned many times with thorns 
and pierced by spears, yet, despite it all, ultimate 
victory will be his, for the history of a hundred genera- 
tions of men reveals tendency in this direction. How- 
ever slowly the human manifests its power it will finally 
vindicate its title to supremacy. Until it controls the 
world the old status of chaos and suffering must and 
will continue, for there is no real, permanent solution 
of social, political and industrial problems except the 
placing of power where it belongs in the hands of the 
best, purest and noblest men of the race who consti- 
tute and are the human element — the Christus. 

Man has in the past thought that he could destroy 
the human, but it has always come to a resurrection. 
It has always survived, risen from its ashes, vindicated 
its title and asserted its dignity and worth. Man may 
crucify humanity, but it will rise again. If streets 
were red with the blood of citizens, if homes were 
destroyed by law-defying mobs over a large area, re- 
ducing society to seeming chaos, the student of history 
would know that this was merely a temporary break 
and that, however disastrous it might then be for families 



164 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and individuals, law and order would in time resume 
control and that the lesson would in the end make 
society wiser, purer and stronger. Slay a bearer of 
the human message and in three days another will 
deliver the message, for grim and undaunted the human 
spirit, son of God, goes forth to war with all that is 
low or vicious in man. It is essentially invincible. 

The end of all is to be, at some very remote period 
in the future, Christus Triumphans, for as civiliza- 
tion advances, the work of the human element accumu- 
lates and becomes more and more impressive; the 
spirit in which it was done gradually reaches even the 
mind of coarse man; the greatness and value of the 
service rendered tends to be more and more realized, 
so that the empire of the human dead over all the living 
increases from age to age. 

This is the empire of the immortals which embraces 
all the mighty manifestations of the spirit in the great 
past. These remain as the precious heritage of the 
present and grow in power. The experience of each 
generation adds an item to the environment of the 
next succeeding generation, to which that has of neces- 
sity to adjust itself. Thus society by the inevitable 
results of its own psychical activity is continually 
being forced to modify and improve its environment, 
and this constitutes our law of social progress. 



VII. 

THE TRINITY. 

If now we seek for a term which, as a symbol, may 
connote and designate this entire conception of cosmic 
force, spirit and collective humanity as Christus, we 
find it in the term " Trinity," which may properly imply 
all that thus far has been written in the pages of this 
book. It does not refer to anything in the nature of 
God, but it is merely a term or word invented to 
designate the summary of all our thought about God. 
It indicates a systematic and logical arrangement of 
such thought, and its value rises from the convenience 
of having a symbol which shall thus briefly charac- 
terize, by a single word, an entire interpretation of 
the universe. It merely refers to a clear sense of the 
relation that seems truly to exist between the three 
ideas of cosmic force, spirit and humanity, and these 
ideas all come to men as the result of observation and 
experience. It rests upon what seems to be a reasonable 
interpretation of certain unquestionable facts, with 
which every man is, or may be, entirely familiar. It 
does not involve an attempt to explain things that 
are beyond the ken of ordinary men, but deals with 
things which a man must see, if he consciously sees 



166 THE GKEEK GOSPEL. 

anything at all, and it seeks to explain what he is eager 
and curious to have explained, if he rises to the level of 
reflection about anything beyond mere physical existence. 
We do not, therefore, absolutely need to add any- 
thing to what has been said already, and so, by refer- 
ence, we include in this chapter all that precedes it. 
We only seek to summarize or restate the matter 
so as to bring out more clearly the essential relation 
which necessarily subsists between the three ideas 
and to show that one symbol may connote and imply 
all of them and at the same time may emphasize this 
relationship. It is a trinity of related ideas involving 
a relation so essential and necessary that neither idea 
can be adequately grasped apart from the others. 
Spiritually interpreted it is the great and final symbol 
of the Christian faith. 

The idea or thought of God as cosmic force is the 
first of the three ideas which constitute the Trinity 
and it is itself complete and final. Nothing can really 
be added to it except by way of further explanation 
of what is already implicit in this first idea. The two 
other ideas simply unfold and develop this, being, 
as it were, corollaries to the main proposition. The 
first idea is, then, cosmic force conceived as the tran- 
scendent, unfathomable source of all things, the 
efficient cause of all life, that which underlies all 
phenomena whatsoever. We marvel at the force that 



THE TRINITY. 167 

is disclosed by a single human genius, for we cannot 
fathom it or comprehend it. Try to conceive a force 
that equals all human genius, not only as it is now 
but as it has been during all the centuries; not merely 
in one department but in all. Add to this the ceaseless 
operation of this force, not only in man but as it is 
in animals, insects, birds and fishes; not only as it is 
in all organic life but in all inorganic forms; not only 
in one planet but in all planets. Try to conceive a 
force that never fails to operate for a moment of time 
in millions of years; that operates with the same exact- 
ness in planets that are millions of miles apart; that 
not only now operates but that always has operated 
and that always will so operate, absolutely without 
any break, suspension or change. Conceive this stu- 
pendous whole, with its infinite adaptations, its cease- 
less flow of life in countless forms, all moving with the 
utmost precision, obedient to the same law always and 
everywhere throughout all space and all time, and this 
is the cosmic force or God. 

This conception leads man to see that he himself 
is a manifestation of this cosmic force, and then it 
is altogether from his observation of himself and his 
race, from his experience and theirs, that he secures 
the two ideas which, added to the first basic idea, 
give the trinity of ideas concerning God. 

We study cosmic force as it is disclosed in inorganic 
life and then as it is in the organic life. In this latter 



168 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

we trace out a wonderful expansion until it culminates 
in man as having the power of conscious reflection 
with all its consequences. This last disclosure seems 
to be unique. An otherwise dumb universe seems to 
rise to consciousness in man. This must be due to 
the operation of cosmic force in and through man and 
so we come to feel that man discloses the force in a 
subtle and peculiar phase, which, so far as we can see, 
is restricted to the field of human hfe. We call this 
spirit, but we must always remember that this is not 
to imply that it is different from cosmic force but that 
it merely connotes that force as it appears operative 
in the field of man. Spirit, then, is a term that we use 
to designate God as manifested in each man as the source 
of all his enlightenment and psychical capacity, as 
the power whereby he is able to understand and appro- 
priate to himself the example set before him by others 
and in his turn to become an example to others. It 
is the entire operative force that is and always has been 
present in human beings as the cause and explanation of 
their humanity. This is the second idea in the Trinity. 
Man then perceives that this activity of spirit ap- 
pears as a process that has always been going on since 
the history of man began, for that history is really 
but little more than the record of the ceaseless effort 
of spirit to reach visible incarnation of itself. This, 
indeed, seems to be its necessary mode of expression. 
Man in the great aggregate, humanity regarded as one 



THE TRINITY. 169 

collective whole, represents the degree in which this 
incarnation has taken place. The very quality that 
constitutes our humanity is our susceptibility to spiri- 
tual influences. Our sensitivity, our capacity to be 
inspired, is what determines our status as human, for 
this is the cause of every great and noble thought, 
ideal or deed. 

In comparison with the whole idea of cosmic force 
how small and frail a thing is man, how brief his span, 
how puny his powers, and yet in his human estate 
he is the highest and crowning manifestation of the 
great force itself! That the high type of man as human 
is essentially an incarnation of God, through the in- 
dwelling spirit, gives us our third idea of the Trinity. 

Therefore we have: First. God conceived as cosmic 
force immanent as law throughout all nature. To this, 
the broadest and most comprehensive idea, men have 
given the symboUc name of Father, looking at the uni- 
versal force as supreme in might, authority and power; 
as the source of all life; as that which protects, nour- 
ishes and maintains all that was or is or is to be. The 
word " father" came from a root which meant to protect 
or preserve, and its ancient meaning was this rather 
than actual parentage. The other early ideas connoted 
by the term were those of power and authority. In 
late Roman law it referred not so much to actual paren- 
tage as to the legal position as titular head of the family. 



170 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Indeed it did not necessarily imply parentage at all 
nor connote affection or sympathy. The fundamental 
idea was that the father was invested with full power 
over the family and that this was inherent in the very 
nature of things. What he did was necessarily legal 
and right. The senators were called Patres, meaning 
those who had hereditary right to authority over the 
community. A clear illustration of the ancient mean- 
ing is still found in the use of the term as applicable to 
a priest, for then it merely means rightful authority 
and legitimate supremacy over his flock. As a symbol 
applied to God it therefore designates the undeniable 
power, absolute authority and rightful supremacy of 
that mysterious force which in its operation appears to 
us as the law of the universe. 

Second. God conceived as a force immanent in man 
as the potential source of all psychical capacity. There 
is this one universal force to which every man has 
potentially free access, whereby each individual man 
may become one more of its incarnations, which means 
that he may become one more manifestation of the 
heroism and grandeur of which human life is capable. 
This universal force is within or behind the individual 
force and it is this that explains the sanity, poise, self- 
control, self-reliance and nobility of character that we 
find manifested in individual men. They rest upon 
this universal force immanent within them, a source 
of inexhaustible, reserved power with which they 



THE TRINITY. 171 

are in direct and immediate touch. Of this man is 
at first but dimly and obscurely conscious. To develop 
this consciousness is his individual life work. To be- 
come truly and visibly what he is at first only poten- 
tially is his spiritual task whereby he vindicates once 
more the truth that the divine force can be thus 
incarnated in man, and this, in a metaphorical sense, is 
to lead his life ad majorem Dei gloriam. To this idea 
men have given the symbolic name of Holy Spirit. 

Third. God conceived as incarnated in human 
beings. The visible result of this is collective humanity, 
which received the symbolic name of the Son. This 
again was specifically idealized as Christus, the ideal 
or perfect man. In antiquity the term " son/' besides 
its commonest meaning, also expressed essential affinity, 
intimate connection, whether material or spiritual. 
Thus sons of the prophets were their disciples, sons of 
death were those appointed to die, while sparks were 
sons of flame. The term, therefore, connoted some 
essential affinity, some intimate connection between 
humanity and God. The term " Christus '' concentrates 
the whole conception in that of the ideal man, the 
highest and finest type of human character, which 
rests upon all that has been disclosed as possible by 
the actual life of human beings. Thus by using the 
term "Trinity'' we may refer to Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost and so, by a single word, refer to all that we have 
tried to set forth in all the preceding chapters. 



172 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

The Son is not God but is, in some measure, a true 
manifestation of God along psychical lines, is therefore 
God imder human limitations, God so far as that 
stupendous force can be incarnated in man. Christus 
is not any single individual but is an ideal resulting 
from a contemplation of the whole field of human 
existence. It is not the less real because of this but the 
more real. The term '' incarnation " refers not to an 
isolated and abnormal fact, not to one single, detached 
event in history, but to an age-long process, whereby 
every human life is, in a measure, an incarnation of 
God. The process is continuous and progressive. Every 
age sees more and more human lives that effectively 
incarnate the divine force. 

All of our civihzed life as we now have it is due not 
to one incarnation of God but to millions of such in- 
carnations, to the fact that the universal force can 
and does seek to express itself in myriad forms through 
the agency of man. Upon this single fact rests all 
that we deem precious, all that lifts our life above 
the level of the insect and animal. All human living 
is the result of this. The only reason why you even 
think about this mystery at all is because there is in 
you a measure or degree of the subtle force which 
is God, which has evolved all that ever has been or 
is, maintains all that now is, and will continue so to 
evolve and maintain forever. In this stupendous 
evolution you have been evolved and of it you are a 



THE TRINITY. 173 

part whether you are conscious of it or not. Upon 
you plays this force whether you recognize it or not. 
If a man rejects it and Uves on the animal plane then 
spirit has failed to incarnate itself in him in any 
effective way and he ranks as the grass of the field, 
because, like that, he has in him no developed psychical 
capacity. 

All true and enduring fame won by individual men 
rests on the fact that they have in an exceptional 
degree manifested the singular potency of spirit, have 
disclosed to the race the splendid possibilities of the 
humanized life, have shown man's nature, redeemed 
from animaUsm, as a life glorified, radiant and preg- 
nant with all sorts of divine possibilities waiting to 
be bom. 

We never know anything whatever about any ab- 
stract quality except as we have seen it incarnated 
in a human being. Of love, justice, equity, mercy 
and sympathy, literally every conception we have 
rests on these qualities as manifested in some indi- 
vidual man. Our whole idea of the meaning of the word 
''divine" is secured by contemplating the best we have 
seen in human life, for all that is best in life is essen- 
tially spiritual. The possession of genius, as we call 
it, renders one man a veritable incarnation of the spirit 
of music and we then, for the first time, realize its 
possibiUties. The orator seems to be an incarnation 



174 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

of speech. We marvel at his fluency, wit and pathos 
and call it eloquence, but of this no man had so much 
as an idea until it had visibly appeared and been demon- 
strated as a fact. So, too, of the gifted sculptor, painter 
and architect. What idea would we have of the possi- 
bilities in that direction if genius had never created 
a cathedral? If it were not for the long procession 
of suffering martyrs what would we know of heroic 
devotion to an ideal, of the possible abnegation of the 
lower self, of unbending consecration of life to the 
furtherance of a high purpose? It is not one saint that 
has taught us the lesson as an isolated instance, but it 
is a steady and unbroken line of them that has dis- 
closed what is possible for human nature always and 
everywhere. 

The Trinity creates its own evidence and this we 
caU the Scriptures, in which is disclosed the mind uni- 
versal. These are all the literature made by humanity, 
not merely that created by a single race in one definite 
historical period but the literature made by the human 
element in all races and all ages. This contains the 
truth so far as man has been able to secure it, and to 
this the individual must go as the source of his strength 
and the means of his development. Through liter- 
ature collective humanity is constantly speaking to 
men, conveying its divine message in countless ways. 
It operates incessantly as a force to which the human 
element of all races and all ages has contributed. 



THE TKINITY. 175 

As this potential force called spirit develops it gives 
rise to reason, which, therefore, in some degree, is man's 
distinctive badge, while, in its highly developed and 
effective form, it is the marked characteristic of the 
human. By careful nurture of this, man secures spiri- 
tual growth while, in its absence, he does not and 
cannot so develop. His sole duty is therefore to 
develop reason and to live conformably to it, which 
means conformably to the spirit immanent within him, 
and, as this spirit is cosmic force or God, it means 
living conformably to the will of God, conformably 
to the law of the universe. To recognize this law 
as existent, as of paramount authority and to obey it 
is to be religious, which means the same as being in 
a high sense intelligent and reasonable. The religious 
man is therefore one who leads his life sanely, intel- 
h gently and reasonably. Nothing is more difficult 
than this and nothing commands more respect and 
admiration. 

To compass it man needs assistance and this can only 
be secured through Christus, for every man who be- 
comes human owes it to his environment, to the pres- 
sure upon his individual life of the collective humanity 
into which he is born and of which he comes to form 
a part. As an isolated individual he would never reach 
a conception of God. He is led to it by the Christus 
and so, relatively to his personal life, the seemingly 
most important element in the Trinity is not the Father 



176 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

or the Spirit but the Son, who leads up to the others. 
Having done this the Son declares that the Father 
and the Spirit are greater than he is, that while he 
guides and saves he is but a manifestation of that 
towards which he guides and that he does this not by 
his own power but because he is the agent through 
whom the cosmic force works to lead the individual 
to the knowledge of itself as the universal law. Be- 
cause spirit as reason is immanent in the Son he 
summons all men to obey reason and seeks to guide 
them into the reasonable life and is a necessary element 
therein, but a part of his mission is finally to declare 
his own true subordination to the universal reason of 
which he is but a partial manifestation. 

Thus Christus, while properly and truly exalted 
to the highest point of intellectual importance, is 
essentially subordinated and claims only to manifest 
that ideal character which all men ought to attain 
and which potentially they are fitted to attain by 
obedience to reason. The idea of the Son must be 
subordinated to the other ideas. They are eternal 
verities while the Son rises in time, is metaphorically 
bom of spirit, and may come to an end, for if the race 
of men should entirely cease to exist then the Son 
would necessarily come to an end, for God would cease 
to be manifested in man, and the incarnation would 
no longer be an existing fact. Christus is therefore 
not God, for humanity is not cosmic force itself, but 



THE TRINITY. 177 

merely a manifestation of it in time and in the world; 
but, in any particular time and in this specific world, 
Christus is the climax of all manifestations of cosmic 
force and so is the crowning glory of the universe so 
far as that is open to men's finite comprehension. 

These three ideas, involving a spiritual interpreta- 
tion of the universe, are the greatest conceptions man 
has yet had. As they are all contained in the single 
term '^ Trinity,'' that becomes the greatest of all 
religious symbols and connotes the highest thought of 
the truly human element in all ages. Properly inter- 
preted it marks the end of false ideas about God. 



VIII. 

JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 

Every race and nation and age has its own peculiar 
and characteristic conception of the Christus and so, 
in a measure, does each individual man. In every 
case it is the result of the special environment, of which 
it is the distinct and even unique product. Certain 
names come to stand for the type of ideal character 
for certain periods and peoples and, as such, become 
concrete objects of worship. They then tend to obscure 
the larger and nobler conception until it is almost lost 
from sight, until its true significance and the law it 
represents are utterly forgotten. Thus Abraham, Moses, 
Brahma, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed 
and Jesus come to take in the popular mind the place 
of the universal Christus, who really is not only all these 
welded together but is a thousand times more. 

For the sake of securing, in the clearest and most 
impressive maimer, this universal conception, I have 
deliberately excluded every concrete and restricted 
form which it has from time to time tended to take. 
All such local conceptions have been and are partial 
and imperfect and tend to become mere superstitions. 
I have therefore tried to secure a point of view that 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 179 

should allow me to conceive the truth as universal^ 
all-inclusive and independent of time and place, seeking 
ever to present essential and ultimate Christianity as 
it exists and always has existed regardless of any of 
its peculiar historic forms. AVhat I have written was 
true three thousand years ago or it is not true now. 
It did not then, nor does it now, depend on any recog- 
nition by man, for it was operative and effective ages 
before man became aware of it as the universal law. 
It is a plain fact that always and everywhere men are 
being taught, modified and developed by their en- 
vironment whether they know it or not and whether 
they will it or not, and this present spiritual environ- 
ment, which is the essential Christus, is the total product 
of the long human past. 

If there is any historic character that cannot readily 
be placed in his true relation to the universal law of 
development which I have presented, it does not seem 
as if any words of mine could be of any avail. If these 
pages reflect the history of collective man, many indi- 
vidual lives must typify and symbolize the racial life 
as here analyzed and interpreted. 

Christianity, indeed, exists independent of any 
individual life, for it rests on the entire life of collec- 
tive man. It has been necessary, and it may still be, 
to have recourse to the concrete, personal life, the 
idealized historical person, as embodying the Christus 
idea for the popular mind. This may still be the only 



180 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

way in which it is possible to give the idea any potency 
with and over masses of men, but beneath all and 
behind all there still remains, and will remain forever, 
the great catholic ideal whereby the Christus ^^is not 
merely Jesus but is at the same time all the highest 
and divinest men who have had, or now have, his 
spirit and who have repeated, or do now repeat, the 
essential words of his life. The truth which alone is 
finally and absolutely true is that the Christus has 
always been with every soul and with all the world 
from the beginning of man's history. Jesus was 
humanity at its best. Everywhere and always there 
have been men who could not be satisfied except in 
finding out and claiming God, men whose souls told 
them that they belonged to God. All these are wit- 
nesses of that without which Jesus could not have 
been, — the oneness, the essential oneness of man's life 
with God. 

'^ The highest and divinest men are the most truly 
men. They are the men whom we have a right to take 
as the true revelation of what man in his essential nature 
really is. The higher life to which man comes is in 
the true line of his humanity. It is merely the quicken- 
ing and fulfilling of what man by the very essence 
of his nature is. The more he becomes irradiated with 
divinity the more, not the less, truly he is man. The 
fullest Christian experience is simply the fullest life. 
Whatever man does in his true human nature, undis- 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 181 

torted, unperverted, is divinely done. Christian char- 
acter is nothing but the completed human character. 
The Christian is nothing but the true man. Thus 
it is humanity that becomes and is our teacher of 
religion, the manifold interpreter of God. The pres- 
sure of the universal humanity on the individual human 
nature is the greatest and broadest approach of God 
to man. Jesus is the consummation and fulfilment of 
that presentation which God is ever making through 
humanity to man. But it is still true that the whole 
truth can and must come not to or through one man 
but to and through the whole of humanity. Religion 
is a quality of the total, undivided human life and 
through that alone can it utter itself. God bestows 
himself by the great, universal personality of man/' 

"Now, when we come to the ideas represented by 
Jesus in the churches to-day, it is all hopelessly blurred 
and indistinct. Underlying it all there must be a real 
personality but it well nigh passes recognition. At 
one time we see a poor Pilgrim, weary, dust-covered, 
ready to faint, knocking at a closed and inhospitable 
door. In another light we see a wan, pallid, bloodless 
figure hanging on a Cross. In another we see a stern 
Justice upon a judgment seat surrounded by all the 
pomp and circumstance of a great assize. In another 
we discover a gracious Shepherd, like Apollo with his 
lute, leading and guiding his flock. In yet another 



182 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

we behold a divine Majesty sitting at the right hand 
of a great King. AYhich of these is the real Jesus? 
There are in the world several hundred millions of 
people who call themselves followers of Jesus. It 
would naturally be supposed that they held some 
single and well-defined conception of his person, his 
purpose and the methods by which he proposed to 
accompHsh it, and that they would move, act and 
think harmoniously towards a common goal. Nothing 
could be farther from the fact of the case. About 
the only fixed and hearty conviction entertained by 
any fragment of this multitude is that the other por- 
tions are wrong. They fancy that because they all 
call the person whom they adore by the same name 
they all mean the same thing, but they do not. The 
Jesus of the Eastern church is not the Jesus of the 
West. The Jesus of the Roman mass is not that of 
the Salvation Army. The Jesus of theology is not 
that of the average pulpit, and neither of these is the 
Jesus of poetry, of art or of popular thought." There 
is the Jesus of the synoptic gospels and the Jesus of 
the fourth gospel, and they are so different that it is 
hard to consider the one as identical with the other. 
While still kept in his historical environment Jesus 
was, in the later gospel, transfigured into a transcendent 
personality and placed out of all relation to the plain 
facts recorded in the synoptics. This, however, was 
but a part of the process of idealization, for there is 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 183 

the Pauline Jesus; the Nicene, ante-Nicene and post- 
Nicene Jesus; the medieval Jesus, who is the magician 
and wonder-worker; and; finally, the Jesus of a score 
of the most divergent theologies, each represented by 
a powerful institution. There is also 'Hhe Jesus of 
Criticism, who is even less historical and less conceivable 
than the Jesus of Dogma. Without coherence, with- 
out reality, too shadowy to be grasped, too subjective 
to be a real person in history, he becomes a detached, 
isolated being living in an abstract or ideal state. The 
result is that the world is lost in a wilderness of 
definitions, bewildered amid the confused voices of a 
multitude of messengers, all speaking at once and all 
speaking variant messages." 

The plain truth is that Jesus has, for the people, 
become a symbol, has become the type of the ideal 
and perfect man without regard to historical records. 
Herein lies his strength and his vitality. Each in- 
dividual conceives his ideal man and calls it Jesus, and 
he often does this in defiance of all history. Severed 
thus from all relation to historic fact the symbol is 
destined to have that hold on mankind which ail pure 
ideals have and ought to have. It is difficult to create 
them and when once existent they are precious in the 
eyes of men. If there is a method peculiarly wise 
and requiring the very highest qualities of character 
to pursue it, men call it Jesus' method. If there is a 



184 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

sane, intelligent and searching criticism, going deep 
into the motives of men and kindly but remorselessly 
exposing the weak points, men say that it is spoken 
as Jesus would have spoken. If anything v/hatever 
is best, noblest, purest and most difficult of attainment 
it is all designated as peculiarly the action that Jesus 
calls for. What we mean to say is that the net result 
of all the diverse interpretations of Jesus has been that 
he has become the world's Hero and by means of his 
worship men fortify and stimulate the creative energy 
and tendency to idealism that is an essential part of 
each man's nature. Jesus stands for universal idealism, 
for a spirit of universal beneficence. 

The value to the world of such an ideal, and such 
a symbol, and such a hero, is incalculable, but it leads 
at times to exaggerations that are painful and socially 
injurious. An ideal is a great and valuable possession 
but it often needs to be checked and modified by reason 
to save it at times from actual perversion leading to 
destructive consequences. When a strong personality 
makes the ideal only an extension of his own self and 
feels that what he thinks ought to be done is exactly 
what Jesus approves, it may have serious results for 
those who happen to be in his power. Much greater 
is the evil when a commanding and resourceful cor- 
poration comes to conceive that its corporate will is 
identical with the will of Jesus and that all its action 
is therefore in harmony with the ideal. Such a power 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 185 

may, in the very name of Jesus, check and even pre- 
vent the spread of his spirit. 

The one great corrective of all the aberrations and 
idiosjTicrasies of individuals and institutions, in this 
respect, is a study of the larger, catholic Christus, which 
steadies and gives poise and balance to all our thinking. 
It comes to explain the real place held by Jesus and 
by all who in any degree are like him and it does this 
regardless of the special views any individual may hold 
as to Jesus, because the idea is great and broad enough 
to include them all. 

The exclusive devotion of the churches to the medi- 
eval conception of Jesus has led to their almost entire 
forgetfulness of the essential Christus and of the Spirit 
and of God himself, who has in them been displaced 
by Jesus. In a word, the undue exaltation of Jesus has 
banished the true idea of the Trinity and substituted for 
it a conception of which no man now desires to speak 
and which no one knows how to explain or defend. 
The necessary thing in all the churches to-day is to 
subordinate Jesus, as he himself requested, to the 
larger and more catholic ideals and thereby save for 
him that reverence which is really his due, by no 
longer claiming for him what he himself repudiated. 

Through all these long centuries, at the end of them 
as well as at the beginning, despite endless discussion, 



186 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

attended by every form of passion and prejudice; 
despite all the fraud, intrigue and selfishness connected 
with institutions nominally created to advance and 
exalt his fame and power; despite all the cruelty 
practiced in his name, the world has been agreed, and 
is now agreed, that this much at least is true, namely, 
that Jesus loved his fellow-men and all of them; that 
he willed to spend his life, and all of it, in their service ; 
that his character was high and unquestioned; that 
he displayed unflinching devotion to duty; that he 
had always the tenderest regard for the weak and 
suffering; that his mind was of uncorrupted purity; 
that the quality of his love was entirely self-sacrificing 
and went out not only towards his friends but also 
towards his enemies; that he did what was just, merci- 
ful and kind; that he spoke what he believed to be 
true and all of it; that he was free from pride, envy 
and jealousy; that he was a supreme example of 
patience, humility and courtesy and was entirely free 
from guile; that he accepted his own burdens calmly, 
bore them with courage and fortitude and helped 
others to bear their burdens; that he was no respecter 
of persons but recognized every man as equally his 
brother and neighbor; that he sought always to know 
the truth and all the truth; that he did exactly what 
he believed to be right without regard to expediency 
or the consequences to himself personally; that his 
one comprehensive message was that it is our chief 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 187 

duty to make the world better and happier by our 
presence in it; that all sin is at bottom selfishness, 
as all righteousness is, in its essence, love; that we 
must seek the welfare of all who are or may be affected 
by our actions and must never seek to secure an ad- 
vantage for self at the expense or loss of others; that 
he was free from this sin of selfishness and was actively 
filled by the spirit of universal beneficence and dis- 
interested love; that he manifested all this in such 
a unique manner and degree as to fix and hold the 
attention of his own and all succeeding centuries. On 
this all men have agreed and it is this that the name 
really connotes in the world to-day. This ideal is now 
burned so deeply into the racial consciousness and has 
been for so many centuries the recognized verdict of 
mankind that the name of Jesus will never cease to 
be a religious symbol typifying the ideal and perfect 
character. It has come to be all this, independent 
of and in despite of theological definitions and formu- 
lated systems of thought, and as such will survive the 
wreck of all theologies and all formal systems. Men 
may discuss as they please but the world knows what 
it means by the name of Jesus and knows very little 
about the metaphysical discussions concerning his 
person and nature. Jesus stands for the ideal man 
and whoever, in any degree, measures up to what the 
world conceives to have been his life and his ideas, 
will forever have the respect, affection and honor of 



188 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

men despite all ecclesiastical and sacerdotal cries of 
heresy. Because of this Jesus stands in all popular 
thinking as and for the Christus. Men may not dis- 
cern its larger and profounder aspects, may not feel 
at all its philosophic force nor see it as the explanation 
of life, but in Jesus it becomes for them concrete, effec- 
tive and real. 

The admiration felt by masses of men will always 
idealize a great man and the process is successful by 
the gradual elimination of facts. Now, in very truth, 
there was in the case of the historical Jesus no real 
break with natural laws, nothing abnormal or anoma- 
lous. '^His life was the natural result of all the previous 
growth of humanity and simply realized in a concrete 
form the noblest ethical ideals that had been held for 
ages by the best men of the race. This goes beneath, 
and outside of, all disputable matters and rests the 
divinity of Jesus upon his true and exalted humanity. 
It is the verdict of the universal reUgious conscious- 
ness. Theologians and ecclesiastics have tended actually 
to conceal and hide the real Jesus in a mist of super- 
stitious wonder, whereas he was the fruit of an age- 
long reaching up of reason, conscience and will towards 
a nobler ideal of human life; the result of an educative, 
disciplinary experience of many successive generations; 
a natural, rational, easily conceivable development 
that has indeed been continuous to this very day and 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 189 

that will run on indefinitely into the future. In this 
age-long evolutionary process, this incessant racial 
development, this racial yearning upwards towards 
the human ideal, Jesus will ultimately find his true 
place, freed from the myths and legends which have 
so long prevented a true perception of his real char- 
acter by the multitude of believers. It will lead men 
to see Jesus as a natural part of the world's history, 
the manifestation of human forces working in his race, 
and in the larger life of man, towards one ideal of 
character. We can trace the plain growth of this ideal, 
the patient travail of the world towards the light. 
We can see the same forces and laws working every- 
where, imder the modification of the varying external 
conditions; the same appetites, passions, aspirations, 
hopes and faiths emerging in every people in the parallel 
stages of development. They reproduce the same forms 
and contents in the same order in widely severed 
peoples. These are a voicing of the human spirit in 
every tongue, disclosing the same course of ascending 
fife, the same trend of thought, proving that, while 
there are many forms of religion, there is only one re- 
ligion, of which these are various stages of development. 
One divine reality everywhere shadows itself in the one 
human ideal, visioned by the soul of man. The flower 
of every race exhales one aroma, the breath of one 
spirit. One face grows upon the manhood of every 
people, the mask of one life is back of all. The light 



190 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

of life everywhere resolves itself into one light, ever 
moving on towards the day. The progress of every 
people is towards one human ideal, imaging God. 
Everywhere a new and more glorious order is struggling 
to emerge from the ethical chaos we call civilization, 
awaiting only some regenerative enthusiasm for human 
rights to thrill through the seething mass. Humanity 
is becoming conscious of its great possibilities. Every- 
where humanitarian activities are multiplying, fore- 
shadowing the rise into the racial consciousness of the 
noble, catholic ideal of the universal Christus, the 
real core and heart of religion. The world is ever 
coming more and more to recognize the reflection of 
the universal mind in the reason, the conscience and 
the affections of humanity. '^ It means in time a warmer 
flow of social sympathy, drawing classes and nations 
into the bonds of brotherhood. It means the recogni- 
tion of the regeneration of earthly society as the true 
aim of man. It will stimulate a more generous enthu- 
siasm in the service of mankind, the sacrifice of more 
and more by the individual to lift the race to a higher 
plane of actual living now and here. 

It is because, whether rightly or wrongly, men do 
vitally believe that Jesus stands for all this, that he is 
the ideal of men now and forever, and when they speak 
his name they connote thereby every heroic, beneficent 
and saintly life whether past, present or future, all of 
whom are thus typified and symbolized. Thus Jesus 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 191 

has come to represent the universal Christus and the 
influence of his name is leading to the broader fields, 
more glorious because more fruitful than those in which 
men have so long been contented to live. 

The prevalent and historic doctrine of the divinity 
of Jesus has but prefigured the ultimate divinization 
of humanity itself, which is capable of rising by con- 
tinuous stages of moral progress upwards to God, as 
the end of that progress. The heated discussion as 
to the divinity of Jesus has, after all, been only a query 
as to whether divinity does not in some way reside 
in us all. Unconsciously men have linked their natures 
with that of Jesus and have fought the battle of their 
own destiny in arguing his exaltation. Thus the great 
battle for the dignity of our human nature has been 
fought around the standard that bore his name and 
through it all he has typified the whole race on its 
nobler side and has always been identified with its 
highest aspirations. The creation and development 
of the Jesus ideal has been a great and unique feature 
in the growth of humanity. It has indicated the pres- 
ence of spirit, which alone rendered it possible. Its 
future correction and modification, which is inevitable, 
will equally be the operation of the same spirit. The 
Jesus ideal has indeed led the way towards the greater 
ideals which are to come and has perhaps been an 
indispensable element therein. The exaggeration and 
false emphasis will pass away but the splendor and 



192 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

nobility of the real human Jesus will forever remain. 
Complex, diverse and clashing as have been the ideals 
clustered around his name, it has all indicated, and has 
resulted from, the racial yearning and individual aspira- 
tions after God. Under the influence of spirit there has 
been a steady movement towards the unification and 
purification of these ideals, leading towards the final 
conscious perception by men of the Christus as uni- 
versal. The church has maintained with the utmost 
vehemence that there was one incarnation of God, 
and has clung to this idea with great tenacity, but it 
has had no clear perception of the profounder idea 
which was the legitimate conclusion and inevitable 
consequence of the doctrine as to Jesus. Its ideal 
incarnation was but a specific instance of a universal 
fact, leading up to the conception that the human is, 
in its very essence, the medium of the divine; that 
all men, in proportion to the development of their 
humanity, are capable of incarnating the life of God. 
The traditional theology has therefore been spiritually 
defective in its insistent limitation of the truth, whereby 
it has concealed the greatness of its own thought and 
come very close to a denial of the higher truth by its 
devotion to the symbol or ideal prefigurement of that 
very truth. The future need take away nothing from 
the truth as it has been supposed to be found in Jesus, 
but it will merely open out that truth into its broader 
and more fruitful significance. 



JESUS AS CHRISTUS. 193 

I believe that this book is in essential harmony with 
the truth as I beUeve that it really was in the mind of 
Jesus, and that the conventional thought that now 
characterizes great institutions that bear his name 
is entirely out of harmony with such truth both as to 
form and contents. Our task is to disentangle the 
religion which Jesus really professed from those forms 
of religion which have fabricated out of Jesus their 
central and exclusive object, which have taken a dis- 
torted description of his life as their philosophic basis 
for theory and dogma. After worshiping Jesus as 
God the world is to reach a living faith in the God 
whom Jesus truly worshiped. Instead of an oriental 
worship and adoration of Jesus as a fetish or idol the 
world is going to try to realize the ideals truly held 
by Jesus in our social living here on this earth. Worship 
of an individual is to give way to obedient service to 
the idea which underlies that entire individual life 
and has given it such peculiar potency. 

That Jesus was in a real and intimate relation to 
God; that he was a genuine and visible incarnation 
will forever be true, but it is also true that all men stand 
potentially in that same relation, that they all partake 
of the divine nature, work out the divine purposes 
and seek to realize the divine ideal. The divinity of 
Jesus is therefore the key whereby we are to interpret 
the lives of all men. In clinging to the ideal Jesus, 
the church has by its fidelity unconsciously served all 



194 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

subsequent ages, but the day is near at hand when 
the traditional Hmitations of the ideal will for all re- 
flecting men be seen to involve a profound and socially- 
injurious error. The prevalent loosening of grip on 
this doctrine is really only an incident in the taking 
a firmer hold on the larger truth which has all the time 
been implicit in the lesser, conventional statements, 
so that the future will see not the destruction but the 
fulfilment and realization of the age-long faith of the 
church. 



BOOK SECOND. 



MAN AND HIS PROBLEMS. 



I. The Nature of Man, 

II. KNOW1.EDGE — Wisdom — Truth. 

III, Education, 

IV. Sacrifice and Renunciation. 
V. Self-Reliance. 

VI. Sanity. 

VII. Evil. 



BOOK SECOND. 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 

From typical man comes by evolution the best that 
we know of Hfe, and yet he is capable of being the 
worst of all living creatures and stands as the paradox 
of the universe. He is the easy prey of those who 
seek to exploit him and too often the despair of all 
who seek to help him. He is capable of exaltation 
and equally susceptible to those influences that de- 
grade him. His presence may be a productive blessing 
and yet it may be a most destructive curse. He is 
certainly a riddle and a paradox, the unsolved conun- 
drum of the Sphinx. 

It is common usage to refer to the lower and higher 
nature of man. It is certainly convenient to do so, 
and it is so interpretative of what seem to be facts 
that it is likely to continue for a long time. It is, how- 
ever, really incorrect, for man has but one nature. 
^Vhen this develops in harmony with its true laws he 
discloses what we call his higher nature, but when he 
lives in antagonism to those laws, or in forgetfulness 



198 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

or ignorance of them, he discloses what we call his 
lower nature, and yet all the time it is one nature. 
The truth is that in the one case he has grown in a 
normal, healthy way and is a manifestation of the 
highest life of which we have knowledge. In the other 
case he has failed to grow and develop and so, rela- 
tively to what he might have become, he seems stunted, 
abortive and dwarfed. 

The so-called lower nature may therefore be more 
properly designated as man's nature existing imder 
conditions that furnish nothing to stimulate and pro- 
duce a healthy development of its potential capacity. 
The natural man is man undeveloped, man in the 
rough, so to speak — like a log which may be made into 
something beautiful, but which, at this moment, is a 
rough log and nothing more. The log may be cut into 
diverse shapes and may then be skilfully treated so as 
finally to receive a high finish and become really artistic, 
disclosing a marvelous complexity of waving, outlined 
circles of many hues and shades. To see all this possibiUty 
in the rough bark-covered log, lying in the mud, may 
be difficult, but it is all there to the eye of intelligence. 
The higher nature is merely the innate capacity of man 
cultivated and developed, while the lower nature is this 
same capacity lying dormant or perverted and spoiled. 

There are countless variations or gradations, so that 
only in the most general way can men be classified. 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 199 

Broadly speaking there are, however, three great 
classes : 

First. There are those men who are worse than any 
animals, more vicious, more degraded, sensual and 
repulsive. 

Second. There are those who seem always struggling 
between what is good and what is bad; who seem to 
aspire towards the good but generally in practice to 
move toward the bad. These seem to have more desire 
for virtue than capacity to acquire it, more power to 
see what is right than they have ability to do it. They 
have lost the contentment of the animal without ob- 
taining any real equivalent therefor. They seem to be 
conscious that they are under a law without having 
capacity to obey it and secure its benefits. They have 
an ever-present consciousness that life is a failure, that 
what they do is a mistake, and yet they seem to have 
no abiUty to do more or otherwise. They obey the 
law of their being in a degree, but not in such a degree 
as to reaUze those blessings which result from a full 
obedience. All is imperfect, incomplete, inadequate, 
and it makes mortal life a tragedy whose dominant 
key-note is failure. They oscillate between the allure- 
ments of the flesh and those of the spirit, generally 
yielding to the former and so losing all rewards of the 
spirit. They may have great acumen but they lack 
any true spiritual force. With occasional visions of 
the higher realms of life they, on the whole, live in 



200 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

the lower. Their distinctive hall-mark is of the lower 
plane. 

Third. It is probably true that no mortal ever es- 
caped belonging in some degree to this last class, and 
so the best of lives have always a tinge of imperfection 
and incompleteness; and yet in a very substantial 
degree some do struggle up into such compHance with 
the laws of their being as in a large measure to reap 
the harvest of real happiness and satisfaction flowing 
therefrom. This we call the human class. It has 
always been a small minority, but it proves what the 
nature of man is when once it is reaUzed, when once 
there is obedience to the laws governing its develop- 
ment. Humanity is, therefore, that life which is natural 
and normal for all men but which the great majority 
lose by disobedience of those laws. It has taken ages 
for man to discover them, see the results of obedience 
and come to a true apprehension of the dignity and 
majesty of the law. Blinded by false theories, deceived 
by vain delusions and sophistries, hoping in some way 
to cheat the law, to secure the blessing without paying 
the price, men have stumbled on towards disaster, 
but they have always found the law stern and inex- 
orable, enforcing its decrees without mercy. 

The true law of being for a man or a plant or for 
anything whatever is such as wiU develop the plant 
or man or thing to its best estate, such as will most 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 201 

thoroughly bring out its hidden capacities and quaUties. 
This is the rule we always apply in forming our judg- 
ments. A plant kept in darkness or under other 
unfavorable conditions may, indeed, live, but it will be 
stunted and imperfect. Its normal type is what we 
find v/hen it has had sunshine, proper soil and all the 
most favorable conditions. We never take the worst 
rose as the true type of the flower, but we seek for the 
best and say that this is what we produce when all is 
favorable for its culture. So if a tree has grown in a 
rocky defile where the lack of space for its branches 
has forced them into a dense tangled mass without 
beauty, we do not say that this is a true type of tree, 
but we look for one that stands in the free, open space, 
whose symmetry and beauty tell us what a tree really 
is when it has a chance to develop naturally and nor- 
mally. We properly judge everything by its best and 
not by its worst specimens. We judge by those who 
have had every opportunity to show what is in them 
and not by those that have been repressed and denied 
proper care and sustenance. As we judge the inani- 
mate so we must judge man. The true type is there- 
fore man at his best, man developed into human. That 
which enables him so to develop must be the true law 
of his being, for everything becomes better by obeying 
the law of its being. Such is the general and even 
universal law governing everything, and it could not 
well be otherwise. 



202 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Undeveloped life is crude and worthless like every- 
thing else in that condition. Its only possible value 
is as a basis for reaching good results by proper treat- 
ment. It is only because it has the possibility of ripen- 
ing into full fruitage that the crude is worthy of any 
consideration whatever. The lower plane of living is, 
therefore, a plane of immaturity and arrested develop- 
ment, in which life is seen as stunted, dwarfed and 
repulsive. It is the plane of spiritual failure and 
disaster. It is, when thus perverted, characterized by 
ignorance, prejudice and selfishness; by hatred and 
cruelty; by drunkenness, Hcentiousness and sensuality; 
by falsehood, slander and maUce; by fraud, treachery 
and intrigue; by envy, covetousness and jealousy; 
by gluttony, cupidity, avarice, vanity, greed and dis- 
simulation; by vulgarity, obscenity and ugliness; by 
filth and nastiness of body and of mind; by the law- 
less, anarchistic spirit ; by a rebellious and discontented 
mind. These personalized constitute what is called 
the Devil — the relentless foe of mortal man; the 
cause of his misery; a foe that is of his own household, 
for, outside of man, these elements do not exist else- 
where throughout the whole universe so far as we know. 
This is the great dragon on which Saint George, sym- 
bolizing humanity, strives to place his foot in token of 
victory. 

Against these we have, as characterizing the higher 
plane of hfe, developed into its best human estate, 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 203 

enlightenment and open-mindedness seeking wisdom 
and truth; love, mercy, compassion and sympathy; 
justice and equity; courtesy, patience, sincerity and 
generosity; self-restraint, fortitude and temperance; 
benevolence, gentleness and kindness; chastity, clean- 
liness and purity; candor, truthfulness and fideUty; 
the forgiving spirit, tolerant and charitable towards 
all; the thirst for knowledge; the love of all that is 
beautiful; the ceaseless search to discover the laws 
of the universe and a desire to obey them. These 
personified constitute what we call the Christus. They 
are the source of man's true happiness and are in har- 
mony with the normal laws of his being. To live truly 
he must obey these. Every evasion carries its penalty, 
and utter disobedience leads to spiritual death. 

Life on this higher plane, when considered in the 
sum of all its individual manifestations, is truly called 
the Kingdom of God, in which humanity has its life, 
to whose laws it is obedient, whose pleasures are wholly 
intellectual and spiritual. It is thus not a kingdom 
far aw^ay, in a remote future existence, but it is to be 
realized and entered here and now. If for you it is 
existent at all, it is within you. If you find its laws 
anywhere you find their sanction and interpretation 
within yourself, and it is only as this capacity to dis- 
cover its laws is personal to you that you can realize 
the ideas of this realm and become a citizen thereof. 



204 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

When a man rises to definite consciousness of these 
ideals and wills to choose and follow them, this is the 
turning point of his life and is what is called conver- 
sion. If it be a reality and he actually succeeds in 
entering this higher plane, it is called his new birth, 
for it is his entrance into humanity. His first birth 
is as man, but his second birth is as human. Many 
there be that seek this kingdom but few there be that 
find it, for the way to it is straight and narrow. 

In every city the mob dwells side by side with those 
who are learned and noble, and so, too, in every man, 
however cultivated he may be, there is in the depth of 
his nature a mob of low and vulgar desires which are 
the still unsubdued remnants of animalism. If this 
mob be not rigorously repressed and forced to keep 
in its hiding places, it may do more damage by a day 
of revolt than can be repaired in a long series of years. 

The great multitude sweeps along on the broad 
highway, crowded, noisy and turbulent. It is a gi'eat 
mass of struggling, quarreling men, each fighting for 
his place in deadly competition with those about him; 
stealing from each other, now openly, now stealthily; 
pushing each other over precipices to make more room ; 
waging deadly and destructive war for the securing of 
those things that may gratify and satiate passion and 
appetite. This is the hell of the lower nature of man, 
the broad way that leadeth to death, and many there 



THE NATURE OF MAN. 205 

be that find it. This is what is called the world, a 
carnival presided over by the devil of ignorance, preju- 
dice and selfishness. Humanity seeks to overcome and 
conquer this terrible world. The human renounces 
the world, the flesh and the devil, and seeks to live 
in the Kingdom of God. He renounces the evil to 
live in the good. He leaves the coarse and vulgar 
distractions and excitements to live in the tranquil 
peace of the mental and spiritual realm in company 
with the humanity of his age and in communion with 
all the immortal spirits of the great past manifested 
in history and the noblest literature. He seeks happi- 
ness in art, music and literature; in the development 
and refinement of his taste; in the creation of more 
art, more music, more hterature. Thus he lives apart 
from the great crowd, and possibly in isolation and 
retirement, but happy and contented, for he is Uving 
in the Kingdom of God. He is hving conformably to 
the laws of his own being. 



II. 

KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 

Knowledge in a strict and true sense is the charac- 
teristic prerogative of man. Of all living creatures 
he alone seeks, acquires and imparts it to others. It 
is the conscious perception of facts and is always the 
result of experience and observation rendered possible 
by a certain sensitivity which is itself a capacity or 
power to react on such experience and which develops 
into the power to reflect, perceive relationships and 
form judgments. This sensitivity we have said is due 
to the presence of spirit as a part of man's very nature. 

It seems to be a plain fact that, in some subtle way, 
man is sensitive to experience as the plate in photog- 
raphy is sensitive to hght. The plate, however sensi- 
tive, would never receive a picture until properly 
exposed, and would not then fix and retain it without 
proper treatment. As it exists prior to use it has a 
power that is entirely potential, but it is there and 
must be there, or no picture could be secured. 

Man has an eye which gives him capacity to see, 
but he cannot actually see until there is light which 
reacts on the eye. If he were kept in utter darkness 
he would never have any more idea of vision than a 



KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 207 

blind man. There is every grade of delicacy in the 
eyes of different men, from the artist, sensitive to 
every shade, perceiving differences where others see 
only sameness, to the man who is color-blind, and so 
on to those who are absolutely blind, possessing no 
capacity at all. This capacity may be said to be 
innate, but the actual realization of vision depends on 
the cooperation of light. Man's ear gives him capacity 
to hear, but he can actually hear only when there are 
vibrations or waves arising apart from the ear and react- 
ing on it. It is the capacity plus the external factor 
that gives him the idea of sound. In this respect there 
are countless gradations of dehcacy, from the musician's 
ear that can detect each separate instrument in the 
orchestra and tell whether or not it be well played to 
the ear of the deaf man who has no capacity at all. 

The same is true of taste, smell and touch. Now in 
sight it is not the eye that really sees, but a something 
behind the eye which is behind all the other senses in 
the same way. It is this which receives the telephonic 
report, so to speak, from these senses and interprets 
or converts it into knowledge. This something is the 
spiritual capacity innate in man, which until acted on 
by experience leaves him as devoid of knowledge as 
the unexposed plate is of a picture. 

We are tempted to speak of some of our ideas as 
innate or intuitive, but they are really not such at all, 



208 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

but are data of experience. However clearly we may 
seem to see them, however early they may come to 
us, however irresistible may be our conviction of their 
truth, however necessary and inevitable they may 
seem to be, they do not appear until there has been 
adequate experience, observation and reflection, on 
which they rest in the same way that all other knowl- 
edge does. 

Our field of knowledge has to do with external objects 
and with the internal operations of our minds, but the 
extent to which such material can actually be used 
by any individual depends entirely on the degree of 
his capacity. Some men can only react on the clearest 
external objects and then to a degree only slightly 
above the capacity of animals. Such men have and 
can have knowledge only in its lowest and crudest 
forms. The possession of this capacity is not due to 
any effort on the part of the individual, and in its 
absence he is unable to understand its presence in 
others, just as an animal can never comprehend the 
difference between himself and his master. Man has 
the innate capacity or he has it not. If it is not in 
him, neither he nor any one else can cause it to appear. 
The capacity to acquire knowledge is, therefore, the 
first test and measure of personality. Lacking this, 
he who is man in outward form is essentially animal, 
for it is only in the degree that he can acquire knowl- 



KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 209 

edge that he can rise into the higher plane of hfe and 
can confront the possibiHties of development into the 
human. Of all that may afterwards follow in his 
career, this is the necessary and first step. Without 
that he is not even the true type of man, and for him 
the path to humanity is closed as it is to the animals. 

It has often been asked whether man can know the 
reality supposed or assumed to underlie the thing 
observed. If by real we mean any condition or state 
or quality of the thing that cannot appeal to or react 
on the innate sensitivity of man then he cannot know 
it, for only in this way may he know anything whatever. 
By real we properly refer merely to what seems real to 
our consciousness, and when it is so certified to us we 
cannot escape conviction of its truth, even if we try to 
do so. It is not necessary that we should have power to 
grasp the metaphysical reality if such there be. The 
phenomenal manifestation as apprehended by his con- 
sciousQess is man's limit and he cannot go, and does not 
need to go, beyond this, so that, in each man, knowledge 
seems real to the extent of his power to apprehend it 
clearly and this depends on his power to reflect. Ultimate 
reality to him is this consciousness of reality, and in the 
nature of things as they are it cannot be any more. 

All knowledge comes to man in the first instance as 
a discovery of something of which he had not previ- 



210 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

ously been aware, and this in each case seems to be a 
sort of revelation. Suddenly there is certified to him 
something new and he says that he has made a dis- 
covery. If this capacity be recognized as essentially 
a manifestation of the cosmic force called God, then 
what he has discovered is a revelation to him by God, 
and so the phrases ''man discovers" and ''God reveals" 
mean the same thing and may be used interchangeably. 
This defines the limits of revelation, for nothing can 
be revealed beyond what man may discover by means 
of the force resident in him, for this is the cosmic force 
or God operating under the Hmitations of man's nature. 
All knowledge in its origin bears this stamp of reve- 
lation. Facts which we have long known become 
commonplace, but there was a day when each fact 
came as a sort of revelation. How little attention we 
now pay to the telescope, the compass, photography, 
dynamite, the telegraph and telephone, the steam 
engine and a thousand similar things, and yet there 
was a day when, in each of these cases, the world was 
startled as by a revelation of things not hitherto even 
imagined. What one man discovers may become in 
time a revelation to all other men capable of appre- 
hending it. From personal possession it may become 
the common property of the race, making all history 
the record of a continuous and progressive revelation 
of knowledge, for a remarkably sensitive and gifted 
man may discover and so reveal to others ideas which 



KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 211 

those other men never could have discovered for them- 
selves. Most men have capacity to apprehend and 
appropriate far in excess of their capacity to discover, 
whereby they enter into the labor of others and reap 
where they have not sown. To a man who has the 
capacity to acquire knowledge, this revelation to him 
personally is the great feature of his daily life, for the 
entire field of racial attainment in the great past is 
open to his individual exploration and, every year, the 
gifted men of the race bring to him the results of their 
efforts. This, indeed, constitutes the richness and 
value of the human life, namely, to be the constant 
recipient of knowledge as it were by revelation from 
God daily. 

Man begins by accepting as true all facts apparently 
certified by his consciousness. Then comes, as he 
gains in power, the stage of scrutiny and criticism, 
which teaches him to regard as knowledge only such 
facts as are upon reflection and examination found to 
be demonstrably correct. He demands adequate proof 
and gives up many of his hitherto cherished facts 
because they cannot stand the test of critical inquiry. 

But the acquisition of accurate knowledge, all-essen- 
tial as it is for the first step towards human conditions, 
is, nevertheless, only the first step. Knowledge of iso- 
lated facts is almost useless, for the fact obtains value 
only when it is defined and explained by a theory and 



212 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

combined with other observations into a law. ^^^lat- 
ever be the fact, man must seek to discover just what 
it means, must endeavor, as we say, to interpret the 
fact. This interpretation whereby we discern the true 
and valuable nature of the fact is Wisdom. 

The mass of men have knowledge while a few have 
this wisdom. Correct interpretation is, however, the 
basis of all certainty in deahng with facts, and hence 
is of the highest value. It is a small matter to know 
a fact, but it is a great matter to be able to interpret 
that fact, to get at its real significance, to ascertain 
the law which it exemplifies. What men need is not 
more knowledge of facts but more capacity to under- 
stand the facts they already know. The quest of the 
world has been for an interpreter, one who could explain 
to man the meaning of his daily experiences. WTiat 
does it all mean? — is his ceaseless query. Always it is 
a fact to be interpreted, and the sole doubt is as to the 
soundness of the interpretation. Every such effort 
involves some degree of wisdom, while truth is msdom 
carried to its highest point. That is to say, every 
interpretation implies some degree of wisdom, for even 
an unsuccessful attempt to interpret must be a degree 
above the mere apprehension of the bare fact. Now 
when we believe that wisdom reaches its highest degree 
and becomes really correct interpretation we call it Tmth. 

Knowledge is, then, the mere conscious perception 
of facts. Wisdom is the interpretation of these facts, 



KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 213 

varying in degree of success. Truth is the final, suc- 
cessful, correct interpretation of these facts. Truth is 
therefore the pearl of great price. It is the only final 
thing. There are no degrees of truth, for there is 
nothing beyond the final and correct interpretation. 
What man seeks is this truth, the correct answer to 
his ceaseless query, the final interpretation of his 
ascertained facts. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, 
hence the love of interpretation, and so every man, 
who seeks to delve below the surface of things and 
penetrate to the hidden meaning, is a philosopher. As 
truth is the highest point of wisdom, the final word 
that can be said, it is clearly seen to be, in any strict 
sense, unattainable. It is an ideal towards which men 
work, which they always hope to reach, but which 
they never can be sure they have reached. There is 
and always will be an imcertainty as to what further 
light may be thrown upon the subject, and so the quest 
for truth will always remain open for ages to come, 
will furnish inspiration and employment for human 
faculties so long as human life continues. The real 
satisfaction comes not from the possession of absolute 
truth but from the development of our faculties by the 
search after it. If final truth could be disclosed at 
once and leave man no more uncertainty, no more need 
of reflection and study to gain it, there is no doubt but 
that it would be a colossal misfortime and not a blessing. 
This IS a paradox and a riddle but it is clearly true. 



214 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Man finds his advantage in having this field for inves- 
tigation, research and study, for it is the only method 
by which he can secure intellectual and spiritual growth. 
To seek to discover what is now unknown, to study for 
a better interpretation of what is known, to confront 
mysteries and delve for the secret that lies beyond 
phenomena, — all this gives man his one great field of 
opportunity and yields him his highest satisfaction. 
It is the persistent effort to discover what is hidden, 
the ever-present consciousness of mystery and an invin- 
cible determination to replace it by knowledge, that 
has made possible the intellectual hfe. 

The true type of the human cannot remain inactive 
before the mysterious forces which surround him, nor 
be content with ignorance, nor acquiesce in the idea 
that any riddle is insoluble, or that any such task is 
too great for him to imdertake. If he be truly human 
he must seek knowledge, wisdom and truth as the 
natural fulfilment of the law of his being. To him 
mystery is never a mere object for worship or adoration, 
but it involves a challenge calling all his powers to its 
study. Instead of being awed or abashed, he is stimu- 
lated into activity and feels the keenest interest and 
delight in his quest. He does not shrink from it, but 
goes forth as if to visit his native heath. He craves 
and must have some explanation, and it is only as he 
feels that he has secured it that he finds satisfaction 
and peace. Seeking it is purely a rational act, and 



KNOWLEDGE — WISDOM — TRUTH. 215 

each man does it in the best way that he can. The 
differences in men in innate capacity and development 
lead them to very different results, whose diversity is 
nevertheless consistent with the fact that each man is 
conscientious and as rational as he can be. All aim 
at rational action, and it is only as a man feels that 
his act is such that he has any sense of certainty 
and confidence. What, however, seems to one man a 
rational explanation, so satisfactory as to cause entire 
cessation of effort for anything better, seems to an- 
other man to be even irrational and imworthy of a 
moment's consideration. The two men are at entirely 
different stages of intellectual development and they 
cannot help seeing the same thing in different ways. 
Each is simply following the light that he has. They 
have the same general aim and purpose, and, if they 
are equally sincere, they are alike entitled to respect 
and sympathy, irrespective of the results they attain. 

Any man, who thinks that he has possession of final 
wisdom or truth, is merely deceived. Always there is 
the chance of a new vision more glorious than the old. 
Always there is the chance of a new and profounder 
perception of relationships, of a new and deeper sense 
of reality. The treasure house on its intellectual and 
spiritual side is inexhaustible. Standing on what man 
has achieved in the past the race moves on and ever 
will advance to greater knowledge and higher wisdom. 



216 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

No man can ever say the final word on any subject. 
Humanity itself will never reach the end of the search 
after wisdom, since, as the individual gains power to 
see, the field of vision extends and yields him the same 
stimulus, thirst and inspiration as of old. Whatever 
they may hold as theory, all intelligent men are con- 
stantly seeking after more light, or, in other words, 
seeking after a better interpretation than they now 
have of the facts of life. This, indeed, is the primary 
condition of all intellectual life. The indolent and 
imdeveloped man may and will cherish the idea of 
having final wisdom which relieves him of what he 
feels is the burden and trouble of further search, but 
this leads to intellectual paralysis. 



III. 

EDUCATION. 

The development of the natural man is brought 
about by what we call education, which may therefore 
be defined as the method by which man makes his 
way to the higher plane of human living. It draws 
out his potential capacity and makes him into what 
seems Uke a new being. Education, in this its broadest 
meaning, includes everything that comes to the in- 
dividual from contact with his race. It is, therefore, 
inevitable that he, who lives in any sort of contact 
with society, should possess some education and dis- 
close a corresponding development of his nature. 

The transformation of man is wholly the result of 
his development under the play of educational forces 
which have been called into existence, slowly and pain- 
fully, by the race in its long evolution, stretching back 
into the remotest past. The race has itself created 
the environment favorable to its own development, 
having at the outset merely the immanent spirit or 
indwelling force as the germ of all this marvelous 
growth. How slowly all this creation of favorable 
environment proceeded is known only to the student 
of the earUest history of the race, and it is only by such 



218 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

study that we can adequately realize the value and 
significance of man's achievement in this direction. 
Created by human exertion, it is sustained and advanced 
by that alone. Let the race for one half-century relax 
its efforts to maintain and improve these conditions 
and the work of ages would be undone. 

We, however, generally use the term " education " in 
a restricted sense, confining it to the individual study 
of the racial results as disclosed in history, science and 
literature, but we never ought to forget that merely 
hving in a civilized commimity, in contact with all 
that is thus implied, does truly educate and develop 
and that this may at times have very striking results 
where the individual power of absorption is remarkable. 
Education ordinarily implies book study, but such is 
really a small part of the forces that reach and affect 
individuals in an educational way. It is important to 
recognize this, for education by contact is the only 
sort that the great mass of the race ever receives. 
Among those nations that are called civiUzed, the 
great majority of men acquire all the ideas they 
have by absorption from their environment. The 
foundation of every man's education is laid also in 
this, for it always naturally precedes book study and 
it is always operative, in addition to such studies, 
as long as a man lives. No one can reahze or 
measure how much he owes to what he receives and 
absorbs almost unconsciously. 



EDUCATION. 219 

But the tone or dominant note of every society is 
due to that small minority who are educated in the 
restricted sense. It is this minority that inspires and 
stimulates the whole mass. A man who cannot read 
absorbs a good deal from mere contact with those who 
do read. Those who read but little absorb from those 
who read much until the final source of the high ideals 
touches at last those great literary records of the race 
which are the fountain spring of power and illumination. 

Education is thus the chief duty of man, for it is a 
duty whose full performance will lead to his doing all 
other duties. If he will not do these when he is truly 
educated, it is probable that he would not have done 
them under any circumstances whatever. 

Education in its high sense implies clearness of 
vision, power to interpret facts and see their true sig- 
nificance and value. To educate is to open the eyes 
of those that are blind, to bring the light to those who 
sit in darkness, to enable those to see clearly who had 
seen but as through a glass, darkly. Many are born 
with eyes that are very near-sighted and live for years 
not knowing that other people have a more extended 
vision. On discovering the fact it is easy to call on 
the optician, secure proper glasses and at once live 
in a new world, so far as vision is concerned. Intel- 
lectually all persons are by nature in this condition 
of near-sightedness. Training and discipline supply 



220 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

the glasses, so to speak, which overcome our imperfect 
and weak intellectual eyes, and enable us to see what 
would otherwise be beyond our vision. For him whose 
ordinary eyes are defective others may make and 
adjust the remedy, but the intellectual glasses each 
must make for himself. Parents, friends and teachers 
may guide and aid but that is as far as they may go. 
Securing these glasses must rest on personal effort. 
The glasses do not constitute education but are mere 
training leading up to it. They merely enable man to 
go out and look for himself and thus learn. School 
and college may help a man to make the glasses but it 
is the use of them afterwards that creates the educated 
man. This training simply extends and develops a 
man's natural powers and so opens up to him the 
possibilities of a new world. Thus all true education 
is self-produced, is a purely personal creation, the 
roots of which are reflection and persistent thought. 
We may guide another into the habit of reflection, but 
the pupil must then reflect and think for himself and 
the result of this is education. 

The trained man is one who is merely ready to educate 
himself by means of this acquired training. That a man 
is a graduate of a certain college only proves that he 
secured the minimum training demanded for his degree. 
It not only does not prove that he has any true educa- 
tion but it does not even prove the amount or quality 
of the training he has received. A man without a college 



EDUCATION. 221 

degree may be an educated man, while the possessor of 
the degree may be only a man of a certain minimum 
training which has never ripened into education. 

Education, indeed, in its highest sense, is a life process, 
growing ever towards more perfect conditions, towards 
a more extended vision. Man must always be train- 
ing and disciplining himself so that constantly he may 
be gaining greater power. The world will then be to 
him ever new and fresh, for he will be ever reaching 
out further and seeing what had hitherto been con- 
cealed. Such education implies constant growth. It 
is an onward movement that has all the freshness of 
exploring new countries. 

The ideal education involves not merely profound 
knowledge of facts but insight into the true meaning 
and real significance of those facts, which we have 
already defined as wisdom. Such an educated man is, 
then, one who has already attained to some marked 
degree of wisdom and who is an earnest seeker after 
truth or the highest stage of wisdom, whose faculties 
have become interpretative in their functions. All 
the main facts of fife may be known by one man in 
much the same way that they are known by another. 
Indeed, the salient facts are known to men of very 
ordinary capacity quite as well as to the most highly 
educated. Education, then, is not the mere acquiring 
of facts, although at times this is a very important 
function of the educated man and may for a while 



222 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

require the exercise of his highest powers. When, 
however, he has acquired accurate knowledge of cer- 
tain facts, this may soon become the common property 
of a multitude of very ordinary men. Not so his 
interpretation of these facts, his perception of what they 
mean, of what they really connote and imply. The 
knowledge of the facts is not his as an educated man, 
but his interpretation of them is his purely and solely 
as such a man and constitutes his vision, which is the 
one peculiar characteristic of the truly educated man. 
This type is a very rare product, but it is the mark to 
be aimed at by all, for the interpretative faculty is 
the cause of man's progress and a single interpreter 
has opened up to thousands of men glimpses of a vision 
they could never otherwise have seen. Such men are 
indeed the true prophets of the race. Few men ever 
do or can fill the true prophetic function of education 
or reach anywhere near its ideal standard, but even 
a little progress in the path adds enormously to the 
satisfaction and happiness of life and extends the area 
of personal influence. All men seek Hght. It is true 
education that supplies it. A ray of light is better than 
darkness. One fact interpreted leads to another. One 
exercise of the faculty gives development and added 
strength for another. 

Near to every man lies the greatest fact of all, for 
it is true that to each man the first fact demanding 



EDUCATION. 223 

his attention is that implied by his own existence, 
which certifies directly, through his consciousness, the 
presence and existence of the mysterious force called 
spirit. To know himself; to be able somehow to 
interpret himself as a fact ; to see the significance and 
value of his own life in the light of all other facts; 
to correlate and coordinate himself into his true place 
in the universe — to do all this well involves all doing 
of which he is capable and leads to the exertion of all 
his powers. To know the laws of health and private 
well-being which enable him to develop and use his 
body in a sane and effective way; to know the intel- 
lectual laws which enable him to develop and use 
his reason, reach mental vision and see the reality 
underlying superficial appearances ; to know the 
economic laws and conditions which secure peace and 
prosperity for the social organism of which he is neces- 
sarily a member — all this is wrapped up in the dictum 
''know thyself" and it leads a man to act conformably 
to the highest principles of conduct throughout the 
whole range of life. To know the laws of his own being, 
laws physical, mental and spiritual, — this is to know 
himself and it is thus the highest point of human 
attainment. Man's first and chief duty is, therefore, to 
know himself. If he ever fulfils it, there will be the 
goal of all his racial effort. In the degree that any 
man knows himself he is educated or developed in the 
true and high sense of those terms. 



IV. 

SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 

Sacrifice and renunciation are the price by which 
alone any high standard can be attained. It is a fact 
resting on long observation and experience and it has 
all the dignity of a natural law. There are certain 
terms on which a certain result may be secured. Man 
must comply with these terms to succeed in his quest. 
This as a law always and everywhere confronts him 
and he has found it to be rigid and inexorable. 

To secure the higher we must renounce the lower. 
To have what is of real value we must be content to 
sacrifice what in comparison is cheap and paltry. The 
law does not require any other sacrifice or renuncia- 
tion. It does not demand that a man give up what has 
real and true value but only asks him to forsake that 
which he would consider as essentially worthless if 
he could but see rightly. The difficulty lies in this, 
that, constituted as he is, these things are attractive 
and seductive and seem vastly important. Truly 
worthless, they seem to be valuable. As a man is, at 
the time when he is called on to choose, immature and 
led by the illusions of egotism, he is deceived as to 
what constitutes value, is blinded by desire, passion 



SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 225 

and appetite, which throw a veil, as it were, over his 
eyes so that he does not see things in their right pro- 
portions but as distorted. What he is called on to give 
up may thus seem to possess the greatest charm. There 
is the siren of pleasure standing in his way whose gaudy 
tinsel seems to him to be far other than it really is. 
He actually has a false sense of value, for otherwise 
he would even then see that the supposed sacrifice is 
really a renunciation of nothing that has any intrinsic 
value. He is merely asked to give up dross that he 
may acquire gold, but the dross is attractive and is at 
hand while the gold is far away and seems uncertain. 
Here he needs faith in the ultimate reality and value 
of the gold which he is asked to seek and, without 
this faith, he rarely makes what to him then seems 
a true sacrifice of what is good and attractive. Left 
alone and unaided he would remain in illusion and 
never have power to escape from it. Here the human 
voice comes to urge him on, to stimulate and inspire 
him so as to create the necessary faith. Christus comes 
and says, through all the man's best friends and ad- 
visers, "Follow me; renounce the vanity of the world; 
renounce its illusions and folhes; seek wisdom, for 
only thus can you find your own true self and reach 
peace and true happiness. Have faith; obey me; 
follow me. All that I ask you to sacrifice is the dross 
of life. I urge you to give up no single thing that is 
really good in a high sense. Lose your lower self that 



226 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

you may find your higher self. Act conformably to 
the laws of your being and you will some day see as 
the best of men now see and you will be at one with 
them. The veil will pass from your eyes and you will 
discern things in their true relations and know that 
what you have renounced was really worthless." 

All things in the world, outside of the purely human 
influences, seem to join against the man as he thus 
stands. All that seems to him to be his own nature, 
his own deepest impulses, seems to urge him towards 
ease and gratification and away from the thought 
of sacrifice or renunciation. He is so impatient, so 
desirous of immediate results, that he finds it hard 
to plow the rugged soil, to drop in his tiny seed, 
to do all the work of caring for the growing crops and 
then to wait so long for the harvest. To do all this 
he must renounce his ease, must devote his time to 
the work steadily, patiently and persistently, thus 
sacrificing all chance to engage in those sports and 
pastimes which are so alluring but whose renunciation 
is the price of the final harvest. 

The law is that he who would reap must sow and 
that only as he sows shall he reap. ^Vhat he sows, 
that in kind shall he reap. If he sow the seed of sport 
and pleasure, he will gather the harvest of ennui and 
boredom, mere weeds and thistles, fit only to be con- 
sumed off the face of the good earth. What he is asked 
to sacrifice he ought, as an intelHgent and sensible 



SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 227 

man, to sacrifice for his own good, not, perhaps, for his 
good at the time but for his ultimate good. For the 
nonce it seems a true loss and, as he is then placed, 
it truly is such. It is a disappointment and a sorrow 
and, however puerile it may really be, it is at the time 
genuine and profound. Yet his welfare in the future 
will rest on his decision, for the sports and pleasure 
of the spring and summer may be followed by the 
disappointment of autumn and the starvation of winter, 
when all sense of sport will have disappeared. Apply 
this in mind to the spring of youth, the summer of 
early manhood, the autumn of mature life and the 
winter of age, and it is clear that on the decision of 
the youth all the fate of a life may rest. At the critical 
moment it is always a question of sacrifice and renun- 
ciation. 

Such is the true meaning of these words. A man 
should only renounce the lower, which necessarily con- 
flicts with his development towards the higher. This 
also sets by implication the true limits of sacrifice. 
There can be no rule to apply to all men. Wealth to 
some men spells dissipation, folly and ruin. Here 
there is need of renunciation. To others it means 
opportunity for true, high development and service. 
Then renunciation would be folly which would not 
only cripple the individual but would impede the very 
cause of humanity, and would hence in every way be 
wrong. 



228 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Sacrifice, in and of itself, is bad and is to be avoided. 
There is and can be no merit in the mere act itself. 
Merit flows from the motive or purpose which leads 
up to such act. It needs justification and is only sane 
and wholesome when it is the sacrifice of something 
that would have checked progress and development. 
A man is, in truth, also bound to sacrifice anything 
whatever that would prevent the discharge of what 
he feels to be an important duty to his family or to 
some person or organization that is peculiarly depen- 
dent upon him. When made intelligently within these 
limits, such sacrifices, however serious they may at 
the time seem to be, rarely prove in the end disastrous 
to the high development of the man, while a deliberate 
and conscious refusal to recognize such duty often 
leads to a loss of character, which finally does degrade 
and injure him. Duties of that type appeal to the 
well-developed man with such a compulsive force that 
he simply cannot disregard them. His ideal is too 
strong. It is only the partially developed man that 
has any serious struggle and then the outcome and 
decision constitute a crisis in his psychic life. Serious 
sacrifices for what to most men are vague abstractions, 
such as society or the cause of humanity, are as a rule 
unwise. 

It is probably a fact that most men who develop 
so as to feel the compulsive force of a true personal 
duty are those who do not share the conventional 



SACRIFICE AND RENUNCIATION. 229 

and popular conception of duty in relation to these 
abstractions. Many a man talks loudly of his sacri- 
fices for the church or native land who is intensely 
selfish in all his relations with family and friends. The 
alleged sacrifice is often the result of pure self-seeking, 
where in some cases the man is afraid of God and seeks 
to secure his personal salvation by doing things which 
he is really afraid not to do. He has no such fear of 
his family or friends, who are supposed to be more 
indulgent and merciful than God, and so his true nature 
appears in his relations with them. It is unquestion- 
ably true that many of the sacrifices for native land 
have been inspired by intense political ambition or by 
thirst for fame, glory or personal advancement, and 
this has too often involved the ruthless disregard of 
all personal duties whatever without any real and com- 
pensating advantage to the country. Too often this 
has been a gamble for high stakes. Then, again, there 
is the ostentatious sacrifice, which is merely self- 
regarding vanity when the man poses for applause. 
There is also the sacrifice which springs from super- 
stition and sentiment based on false conceptions of 
life. 

Much of the so-called sacrifice is really self-destruc- 
tive and essentially involves a degree of insanity. It 
not only does not help him who renounces but it often 
injures the very person for whose sake it is ostensibly 
made. Sacrifice must never rest on mere sentimen- 



230 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

tality, for it is then mischievous and pernicious. If 
any man really sacrifices what is truly necessary for 
his normal growth and his personal duty, he will be 
put to all the test he can be expected to stand. Let 
him avoid all he can, for there will be enough. 

There is one thing always to be remembered, — to 
be effective the renunciation must not be partial. 
Compromises are as a rule fatal in cases of this sort. 
This is so true that in many cases a sacrifice had better 
not be made at all than to be made in a half-hearted, 
imperfect way. Serious and full surrender of the 
obstacle is what is demanded. It is not always some- 
thing bad that is to be renounced, but often it is a 
thing good and even refined in itself, which is, however^ 
time-consuming and therefore inconsistent with secur- 
ing enough consideration for the more important, 
serious and really higher purpose. Here it is duty to 
renounce one good thing for a better; one that makes, 
perhaps, for culture and refinement for one that makes 
for solid character; one that makes now for a per- 
fectly proper form of pleasure for one that conduces 
to higher attainments in the future. 



V. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 

Rome begs the individual man never to trust him- 
self, but to rely on his superiors for advice and to 
follow strictly the rules they prescribe. For the masses 
of men this is a valuable and very practical suggestion 
so long as there is some honesty and virtue in the 
adviser, who is assumed to be thus intellectually and 
spiritually superior. Greece urges the man to rely 
on himself, believing that through many a mistake 
and stumble he will acquire some common-sense and 
secure a development which mere reliance on others 
could never beget. 

Neither suggestion is adapted for all men. Some 
ought to rely on others just as a blind person ought 
to rejoice in any guidance, which, however imperfect, 
is better than none at all. For a man possessed of 
full eyesight to be led about as one blind, by a person 
who sees no more clearly than he does himself, would 
seem to proclaim that both parties to the act were 
either very foolish or were playing a part for the 
deception of others. The truth is that the extent to 
which a man properly relies on the use of his own 
intelligence is the measure of his personality. 



232 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

''What is within a man's skin is all that, strictly 
speaking, is his." If he finds there nothing that may 
be developed into a capacity on which he may safely 
rely, he will rarely find it anywhere else. He lives 
in a world full of the most wonderful resources, all of 
which, however, become available to him only on the 
condition that he shall have individual capacity to 
use them. He may seize the opportunities of life to 
the degree of his capacity and no more. This capacity 
no man ever possesses in the beginning of his life, 
except as germinal or potential, and so individual 
power on which, later in his life, he may rely as being 
in a sense his own, always rests on the fact that he has 
himself developed that power. In a true sense he is 
reaping the harvest of his own endeavors. Power 
to rely on self is, therefore, as has been said, the great 
test and measure of personality. Self-reliance is thus 
an ethical ideal. 

Man, however, is lazy. Self-development is hard 
and stretches over many years of persistent effort. 
To follow a guide is easier than to study your own 
course and be your own pilot. In a word, to be helped 
is easy, while to help yourself is hard. It is so alluring 
to hear that others can carry your burdens, solve 
your problems, take all the responsibility for the 
decision, and it is so hard and perplexing to do all this 
for yourself. This is another root of man's troubles,. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 233 

his laziness, resulting in acquiescence in whatever 
promises to dispense with effort on his own part. He 
who holds out great expectations as the result of mere 
lazy obedience, he who declares that all can and will 
be done for the individual by some one else, that he 
will be saved by mere lazy compKance with ritual and 
payment of fees, — he who does this is crushing out the 
germs that might ripen into a self-reliant character. 
We are all aware that a vast number of men are 
^t this time so constituted that self-reliance is utterly 
out of the question, and this may justify, as a tempo- 
rary expedient, any scheme which fits the exigencies 
of the case. But it does not justify the erection of 
this into a final ideal. Granted that many men are now 
lazy and need a stem external and parental author- 
ity, need, in fact, to be coerced for their own good, it 
is not true that we are to treat this as a permanent 
condition for man. That these men are now necessarily 
dependent and need guidance is true and there can be 
no doubt about it. So far as this duty of superin- 
tendence and guidance is done in the right spirit, it 
is the discharge of one of the highest functions of 
humanity, but, whatever be the present necessity, 
self-reliance is the true and normal state of man. Arise, 
stand on thine own feet and be a man! This connotes 
the true idea. Man may be weak, but weakness is 
not his true ideal. Man may be ignorant, but knowl- 
edge is his ideal. He may be corrupt and insane, but 



234 THE GEEEK GOSPEL. 

purity and sanity are his normal estate. So he may 
now be dependent, but self-reliance is his true state. 

Whatever man is at the time, this we must face and 
we must admit it to be a fact but we must not lower 
our ideal by reason of it. Because so many men sin, 
we are not to say that virtue is no longer the ideal, 
but, on the contrary, so much the more need is there 
to assert the ideal and vindicate its real excellence. 
We need not deny palpable facts but we may declare 
that we will not be satisfied that such should always 
be facts and that, if we cannot raise a multitude to 
virtue, we will not any the less try to raise up a few 
to carry the banner and fight for the cause. 

In this world a thousand influences help him who 
tries to help himself. The root of it all is that a man 
shall at least try to be self-reliant, try not to be the 
shadow of some one else, try not to wait for another 
to speak before he shall know what he himself thinks. 
Arise, stand on thine own feet and be a man! This is 
the cry of the Christus. It is better and nobler to think, 
though with a mixture of error, than to repeat, parrot- 
like, the wisdom of another. 

Whatever may be rhetorically said against reliance 
on self, most men do have a feeling that this is their 
duty, and, whatever they may say and however they 
may pray, they do hold this as their practical ideal. 
They speak by one system but they live by the other, 



SELF-RELIANCE. 235 

and this is due to saving common-sense. They may 
pray but they also work; they may ask for guidance 
but they sedulously study the chart and plot out their 
own course, and herein they show the true Occidental 
spirit. 

The root of an ethical existence is that a man shall 
not be a burden to others but that he shall be self- 
reliant and self -maintained. If it is true that we ought 
to bear our brother's burdens, it is also true that he 
ought not to allow us to bear them if he can help it. 
Necessarily we depend on each other in countless ways 
and our interests are intertwined into a living web 
which is a social unity, which implies that each shall 
bring to this common web his own independent life 
and spirit, and to this individual independency and 
self-reliance the value of the social web is due. 

To sit and wait for aid from an external source is 
the trait of a lazy man. To ask and pray that aid 
may be given, that bread may be provided, that all 
the good things of life may come to him who simply 
waits in idleness to receive them as a gift from his 
father, — all this is mere folly. The true man will arise, 
gird his loins and go forth to get these things as the 
reward of his own thrift, skill and labor. Whatever 
the people of the Occident have said, this is the way 
they have, in the main, lived and this is the reason 
why they stand where they do in the scale of civiliza- 
tion. All men, whatever their creed, admire the self- 



236 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

reliant man, for they are really conscious that he is 
the type of what normal, rational and healthy men 
should be. 

The extent of social disease is indicated by the ab- 
sence of self-reliance in the community at large. The 
remedy is not to flatter the diseased by proclaiming 
their condition normal but to deplore the disease and 
determine to cure it. Man has always had a tendency 
to believe that aid was to be secured by magic, by 
repetition of formulas, rituals, prayers and incanta- 
tions. This method is so easy that, if it could be shown 
to be really operative, it would certainly be the death 
knell of all manly self-reliance. Man will not toil for 
what is to be had for the mere asking. He will not 
pay for a thing he can get for nothing. If there were 
truly a Being who would provide all things, man would 
surely roll all the responsibility from his own shoulders. 

Now man has in himself a part of that force which 
causes the universe to exist. On this, as a divine power 
within himself, it is man's duty to rely. By the aid 
of this the race must gain for itself those things whose 
free gift, without man's exertion, would sap the very 
roots of all character. The greatest evil that could 
happen to man would be to induce him really to be- 
lieve that supernatural aid could and would be granted 
whenever he had by negligence, ignorance or wilful- 
ness involved himself in difficulties, for it would teach 



SELF-RELIANCE. 237 

him to depend on external help; it would take from 
him the desire to improve his own faculties, to trust 
his own intelligence, to obey the law of his own reason, 
to amend by effort his own hfe and the lives of others. 

"If we could relieve the improvident so as to make 
him as well off as the provident; if we could protect 
the thoughtless so that he would suffer no more than 
the thoughtful; if we could fill the squanderer's hand 
whenever he had emptied it so that he would know 
want and destitution no more than the industrious, 
prudent and careful, we should set a premium on the 
shiftless and retrogressive qualities of men and finally 
destroy all thought, all foresight, all labor and thrift." 
So far as a pious sentimentality has taught or practiced 
this, it has been an evil and a source of disaster to 
the race. 

Arise, stand on thine own feet and be a man! This 
is the human motto. Realize thyself and thy powers. 
Learn what they are by relying on them and trusting 
them. Thus learn that in thyself resides divine force. 
Conquer indolence and expect to have only what you 
have earned. Believe that what you ought to do, 
that you can do; that what you ought to have, 
that you can win by putting forth the force immanent 
within you. Rely on yourself and you will discover 
that you are not walking alone and unattended. 



VI. 

SANITY. 

In a survey of human life we discern certain types 
that disclose results which make life seem to be really 
worth living. These coimote and lead up to what 
we call sanity, which necessarily implies normal, well- 
balanced and rational development. It enables the 
individual to disclose his characteristic human power 
and capacity in such a way as to secure personal happi- 
ness therefrom. It implies the fulness and richness 
of human living, for sane conditions are human con- 
ditions, which are all in the sphere of the developed 
reason. Sanity, then, signifies the mental control and 
regulation of life, presupposing insight, perception, 
judgment, power to discern intelligently what ought 
to be sought and what ought to be avoided. It aims 
at a rational happiness and means self-poise, self- 
control and the consciousness of personal power and 
capacity. It implies and necessitates harmony, equi- 
librium and due proportions, so that, in the group of 
conditions which constitutes the man no one element 
shall have undisputed and unchecked ascendancy. 

What we have thus far called sanity is exactly what 
we mean by the term ''righteousness." It is the most 



SANITY. 239 

nearly ideal status and is therefore seldom seen or 
realized in a high degree. The mass of men possess 
sensitivity only in slight measure, so that in their case 
the physical is constantly securing complete ascendancy 
and crushing the psychical. No sanity or righteous- 
ness is possible under such conditions. Against the 
continuance of this status, spirit seems always strug- 
gling to create more perfect media for its use, in which 
purpose it is thwarted and defeated by countless 
obstacles which it seems to have no power to avoid. It 
seems to need cooperation and to call, at times, for 
some resistance, so that the man may avoid even its 
own entire ascendancy. The ideal seems to involve a 
certain equilibrium, which is the very essence of sanity. 
The object seems to be not to have spirit supersede 
the individual and to use him independent of his own 
cooperation, but to have him so develop as, in a sense, 
to give rise to a new and definite product of person- 
ality, rendering possible a genuine differentiation of 
spirit itself. Union with the physical furnishes the 
basis and opportunity for this. Spirit exists, in the 
case of each and every man, under new and imtried 
conditions. To have him develop all his powers har- 
moniously, in due proportion and balance, is to secure 
the ideal status, which is righteousness or sanity. While 
genius is perhaps always a more perfect manifestation 
of elemental spirit, it is not necessarily as near to the 
human or spiritual ideal as the righteous man who. 



240 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

although less brilliant, may be the finer product. The 
absolute human ideal would seem to be an individual 
capable of manifesting the very highest genius without 
in the least losing this equilibrium of powers which is 
characteristic of the righteous man. To secure fulness 
of expression at the cost of wrecking the individual 
organism could not be deemed an ideal procedure, 
but to have the man so develop as to become sensitive 
in the highest degree and ready to be thus freely and 
unimpededly used, leaving him still normal, sane and 
righteous — this must be the true ideal. 

If we carefully consider this matter and realize all 
that is involved in lifting a purely animal organism 
to those conditions of psychical activity which we 
know to have already many times existed as facts 
in our racial history, we shall not be surprised at the 
number of failures but must wonder that, even in one 
case, success was secured. We shall come to realize 
that the normal, sane, righteous man stands as the 
greatest product of the cosmic force, that he has been 
evolved under an inconceivable complexity of clashing 
conditions which render his existence the greatest 
triumph of spirit, and that it has taken ages to accom- 
pUsh this. 

Genius may be normal and sane, in which case the 
sensitivity is not out of proportion to the other con- 
stituent elements of the personality; there is due 



SANITY. 241 

harmony and equilibrium, which gives poise and con- 
trol, seeming to hold the psychical force in check. 
Genius may be abnormal and, in a strict sense, not 
sane, when the sensitivity, in some single direction, 
is so great that all else in the personality seems sub- 
ordinated to it; when the force causes an intensity of 
reaction which is almost destructive of the organism 
itself. Genius is often like a tree whose branches 
almost break by reason of the load of fruit. At times 
they do break and ruin the tree. Where there is 
extreme sensitivity, peculiar power to receive and absorb 
subtle influences, power to see visions and fantasies 
and vividly realize ideals, and where this is used by 
spirit to its maximum degree, the delicate structure 
snaps and breaks. The sensitive organism is, as it 
were, torn and wrecked in the effort to exact the last 
degree of opportunity for expression. 

Just before reaching genius we find what we may 
call the "great man," who towers above the ordinary 
pigmy men and secures remarkable ascendancy over 
his fellows. He is in such exact harmony with his 
environment that he seems to incarnate the ephemeral 
national mind and temperament and to stand in the 
eyes of the men of his day as a concrete and visible 
ideal. He falls short of genius, which ordinarily is 
out of touch with the immediate environment, but 
he is more useful in his day and his influence shapes 
the course of affairs more than is directly affected 



242 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

by genius itself. The great men of one generation 
are those who^ without themselves possessing genius, 
are nourished by the genius of preceding generations 
and seem to be necessary agents for translating the 
thought of genius into the common vernacular and 
giving it popular force and effectiveness. These great 
men are the practical heroes who are understood by 
the people, who interpret the message of genius and 
give it social potency. They turn thought into deeds, 
carry out theory and speculation into practice, in a 
way that is not possible for genius itself. By being 
one remove from genius, they seem to possess a degree 
of sanity and common-sense not often shared by pure 
genius. Genius furnishes the permanent classic ele- 
ment, the acute, penetrating interpretation w^hich is 
wisdom, while the great men furnish the temporary, 
practical element which disseminates this wisdom and 
applies it to the affairs of social and national life. The 
great man is essentially the man of action, who, being 
close kin with genius, is still adapted to the crowded, 
busthng hfe of the camp, the senate and the court. 
He has a peculiar sensitivity which will, so to speak, 
stand the wear and tear of such life and this implies 
remarkable physical qualities. Thus unusual sensi- 
tivity coupled with unusual physical conditions results 
in the great man, who is capable of bearing serious 
strain and pressure without injury. He seems to have 
a sort of genius of a coarser fiber, less delicate but more 



SANITY. 243 

effective and useful. Such unusual sensitivity, coupled 
with ordinary physique, which is, however, sufHcient to 
maintain equilibrium and poise, results in the normal 
and sane genius, in whom the psychical always main- 
tains a rather marked but somewhat restrained ascen- 
dancy. A very remarkable sensitivit}^, coupled with 
an imperfect physical organism, results in abnormal 
genius, when the psychical secures at times complete 
ascendancy. 

Thus at one end we have the dull and stupid in- 
action of the idiot, with whom spirit can have nothing 
to do, and at the other end the feverish, frenzied 
exaltation of the exceptional genius, who may fairly 
be called the victim of spirit, to whose lust of expres- 
sion he is sacrificed. The music he creates, the art, 
the literature, the scientific discovery, which result 
from the exaltation, come as a revelation to the race, 
for which he pays the price. He is as one possessed, 
for he works at his task with more zeal than any slave 
ever worked under the most cruel taskmaster and, 
at its close, sinks exhausted, but with his name on the 
world's roll of honor exalted as a mouthpiece of the 
spirit force. 

Between the two extremes of idiocy and genius lie 
the masses of men and humans. No one ever wishes 
to become an idiot, for it means the loss of all person- 
ality and is a living death. It is probably true that 
no one ought ever to wish to be or become an abnormal 



244 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

or exceptional genius, for that also in a sense involves 
a loss of personality, in the extreme ascendancy of 
the one dominant, passionate ideal which blots out 
all else and destroys the harmony and equilibrium of 
being. In such cases happiness and contentment are 
absent in a marked degree, for they sacrifice all ease 
and comfort in obeying the imperious mandates of 
spirit. 

We may therefore say that whatever tends to save 
life, to develop capacity coupled with self-poise and 
self-control, to make life healthy, sound, happy and 
good, makes for sanity, and all this is summed up in 
one word, which is ^^ righteousness." This term means 
all those things and conditions whose presence is nor- 
mal and right and which render life worth having now 
and here. The righteous man is the sane man, the 
human. 

Whatever tends to destroy life physically, mentally 
or spiritually, to make it weak, sickly, miserable and 
wretched, to retard or prevent development, makes 
against sanity, and all this is summed up in the word 
''sin,'' the violation of the laws of man's being. Self- 
preservation is sanity. Let a man remember that his 
true self is not his body but his mind, his power to 
think and reason, his sense of beauty, his craving for 
the ideal, his thirst for knowledge and wisdom, his 
aspiration for what is noble and good. Whatever 
lessens or destroys these is a blow aimed at his very self. 



SANITY. 245 

Humanity is a sane minority surrounded by an 
insane majority. There can be no doubt that, spiri- 
tually considered, and taken as a whole, the world 
must be regarded as a great lunatic asylum. If we 
reflect upon all that goes on in this world, considering 
its horrors, cruelties and atrocities, its wrangling and 
fighting, its social follies and excesses, its vain and 
puerile pomp and ostentation, its industrial and 
political fraud, its ecclesiastical trivialities and banali- 
ties, its general self-destructiveness, we can find no 
other way to explain it. We must never be influenced 
by mere numbers. If the whole population of the world 
were so corrupt that, out of a million of men, only 
ten were healthy and developed intellectually and 
spirituaUy so as to stand for sanity, these ten righteous 
men would be the true and normal type of man and 
what was disclosed by them would be the hope and 
glory of the race. We must see that the fact that there 
are a million drunkards does not dignify the individual 
sot; the fact that there are a million prostitutes does 
not make chaste maternity any the less ideal; the 
fact that there are countless diseased men does not 
make health and vigor any the less a triumphant 
success. In all matters intellectual and spiritual there 
is, and ever must be, a standard or ideal and this must 
be independent of all mere counting of heads. 

In the great struggling mass which constitutes the 
world the individual may lead his life of righteous- 



246 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

ness and sanity. By renouncing its so-called popular 
rewards, by standing aside from its tumultuous crowds, 
by being in the world but not swallowed up by it, he 
may find for himself the tranquil peace of a contented 
spirit, to which the sane men of the great past shall 
come and minister. He is independent of this mad 
world if he but wills to be so. Isolated from the noisy 
multitude but in touch with collective humanity, he 
may realize in art, music, literature and the higher 
service of mankind the conditions of sane living and 
thinking. Because all this is and has been true for 
ages, spirit has been able to keep alive and gradually 
to increase the human minority, so that it is possible 
that, in the very remote future, sanity shall be the rule 
and not the exception. It must, indeed, be the final 
goal of the race, so that some day sanity must come 
to be the condition of the then majority, and this will 
be the millennium, which thus connotes the ascendancy 
of sanity. 



VII. 



EVIL. 



Men have generally said that one of the most diffi- 
cult problems to solve, one of the hardest terms to 
interpret, is the element in life which we call Evil. 
It is everywhere present and confronts us constantly 
in a way to arrest our attention and compel us to 
think about it. When we consider the pain, the agony, 
the misery that is woven all through the web of life 
we are aghast. Millions of men have cried for ages. 
Why is it so? Why cannot we escape all this? Why 
must there be so much that is repellent and awful? 

The difficulty, however, arises from man's attempt 
to interpret evil so that it may be consistent with 
certain of his theories and prepossessions. Clear as 
it has long been that what he calls evil is absolutely 
inconsistent with these theories and demonstrates 
them to be false, he still stubbornly clings to them 
and calls evil a mystery which, for some inscrutable 
disciplinary reason, is inflicted on him by a Potentate 
of the universe, who at the same time is omnipotent, 
benign, compassionate and omniscient. The Potentate 
knows every twinge of pain, every disaster, every 
calamity, and knows this in advance of its occurrence. 



248 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

He is able to prevent all of it by mere exercise of om- 
nipotent will power. He is full of tenderest compassion, 
and yet he permits this awful burden of sorrow and 
pain to rest on men for all the ages. If it were true 
this, indeed, would be a mystery and it would certainly 
be insoluble. 

If man will, however, remove from his eyes the bandage 
placed over them by false theories and prepossessions, 
he will see that, appalling and discouraging as the fact 
of evil may be, it is not one of those facts which involve 
any mystery whatever. Whether evil can ever in any 
very substantial degree be removed or overcome as an 
element in hfe is a question which it is quite impossible 
to answer in some of its aspects and extremely easy 
to answer in some of its other aspects. The proper 
interpretation of the fact is, in any event, the first 
and most necessary step towards any solution of the 
matter, if any such there be. 

The main reason or cause of man's prepossessions 
lies in his vanity, conceit and indolence. He does not 
want to acknowledge his own responsibility for he 
does not want to assume any such burden. He feels, 
in fact, humiliated if forced to see that the evil flows 
from his own failure to act wisely, and as this failure 
rises out of the fact that he is ignorant, prejudiced 
and selfish, to acknowledge the fact is to convict him- 
self of a crime against himself for which he can rightly 



EVIL. 249 

blame no one else. He is, therefore, gratified and 
flattered by a theory that takes responsibility from 
his own shoulders and makes him the creature of 
circumstances. If, from the final consequences of all his 
ignorance, prejudice and selfishness, he finds that he 
can be saved by certain artificial and technical methods, 
with which he can comply without too much inter- 
ference with the way of Hving he wishes to adopt, he 
feels that this is a good solution of the problem, for he 
is not obliged to condemn himself except in a theo- 
retical sense, as technically demanded by the method. 
If there is a God whose will it is that all these things 
should be as they are, then it is idle for him to struggle 
against it, and he may properly enough sit in indolent 
ease and let it all continue, since he himself is saved 
by the magic ritual he is careful to observe. This is 
really a terrible delusion, and evil will never be removed 
so long as it continues to retain its place in man's 
mind. To destroy the false theory is the first step 
in the conquest of evil. 

So far as our intelligence shows evil to be a necessary 
fact, man must accept it and bear it with stoical resig- 
nation, making no useless complaints and finding no 
fault with what is inevitable. So far as it is seen to be 
remediable he must either gird his loins and attack the 
problem or else go on suffering the penalty of his own 
folly, his own laziness, vice, selfishness and ignorance. 



250 THE GEEEK GOSPEL. 

Evils may be divided into three classes. The first 
includes all those which could not have been avoided by 
any intelligence or foresight on the part of any person 
either in the present or in the past. Evil of this class 
is due to the collision of man with the great elemental 
forces which act under fixed laws utterly regardless 
of consequences so far as he is concerned. These are 
due to the destructive and terrific force of the elements 
and are represented by the storm which brings ship- 
wrecks; the tempest with its hghtning that smites 
man and his proudest structures; by the hurricane, 
the cyclone, the tornado, the volcano and the earth- 
quake. These, indeed, are forces that at times 
work appalling disaster. They come with irresistible 
might and must be calmly accepted as inevitable and 
unescapable. Here comes the call for stoicism and 
resignation. It is as if one were face to face with Fate. 

These elemental powers, whose operation results in 
disaster to some individual men, are beneficial, help- 
ful and necessary to man in his collective capacity. 
They cause loss to a few but bring safety, health and 
happiness to miUions. If they did not act as they do, 
no life could exist on the planet at all. While, relatively 
to some individuals, these collisions with elemental 
forces are true disasters, no one is to blame for them 
and no power exists anywhere that can prevent them. 
The individual who is crushed is indeed doomed, as 
if by Fate, but in all this there is no mystery, for it is 



EVIL. 251 

inevitable that such events should occur. They, how- 
ever, constitute but the very least part of man's 
evils. 

The second class includes those which are indeed 
due to man's agency where, however, this has operated 
over a long period and covers all the vices of his racial 
predecessors, which have been, so to speak, seeds from 
which the present noxious plants have grown. This 
now gives him what we call inherited vices and 
tendencies towards vice, weakness of constitution, 
sluggishness of mind, insanity, deformities, monstrous 
growths, deafness, idiocy, blindness, and so on through 
the whole hideous catalogue. These roots, running 
deep into the soil of the remote past, cannot be torn up 
but can only be finally killed, if ever, by persistently 
lopping off the growth above ground imtil the roots 
die. In all this class of evils man, the individual, seems 
face to face with Fate. The responsibility cannot be 
definitely placed. No one now living is to blame. 
The immediate predecessors in the chain of life may 
not be in fault, but, for the individual so afflicted, 
there is no escape. While the evil may be mitigated 
and its severity modified and relieved, it comes with 
all the finality of a decree of Fate. All that can be 
done is to stop, in every way possible, and in every 
degree possible, further transmission and longer per- 
petuation of the curse. Awful as it all is, man can 
blame no one but his own race for this which may be 



252 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

called the Curse of Adam, his own typical, sinning 
ancestor, while its relief, mitigation and extinction 
He wholly in the hands of man. No power external 
to the race ever can or will check or terminate this 
evil, this curse bequeathed by man's wicked past. 

The third class includes all evils that might have 
been prevented by the agency of men now living. 
This embraces by far the greater part of the real evils 
of social, political and industrial Hfe. More than four- 
fifths of all the evils that appal man are of this class. 
They are all due to the presence of ignorance, preju- 
dice and selfishness in man himself. Man, the sufferer, 
is thus the cause of his own woes. They come because 
he violates natural laws; because he does not live 
conformably to reason; because he is lazy, vicious 
and licentious. 

So far as there is any assignable explanation of all 
this it seems to be found in the fact that in the evo- 
lution from animal to human, man is necessarily vested 
with a responsibility for which vast multitudes of men 
seem entirely unfitted. These seem to be the victims 
of their crude and undeveloped reason, from which, 
we have said, there seems to be but one escape and that 
is in the cultivation of the spiritual side of man's nature. 
The enormous difficulties attendant upon any attempt 
to elevate masses of men have led to a very general 
feeling that it is well nigh impossible to do any such 



EVIL. 253 

work rapidly or on a large scale. This feeling is 
certainly justifiable and rests on a vast amount of 
experience in the past. 

It is almost a paradox that reason, which is certainly 
man's highest attribute and under some conditions his 
greatest blessing, is also the cause of his misery and 
distress. But it seems to be true that man's peculiar 
capacity is as great for evil as it is for good and that 
it turns in the one direction or in the other according 
as it is regulated, controlled and cultivated or as 
it is left crude and imperfect. This, however, should 
not be thought strange or unusual, for the same thing 
is true of almost all forces, which are only safe and 
valuable when intelligently directed and wisely con- 
trolled. Dynamite has assuredly aided man to achieve 
some of his greatest and most useful enterprises, but 
in the hands of bad and incompetent men it is and 
can only be destructive. Fire and water, which are 
absolutely essential for all living, may become terribly 
destructive and for a time work havoc, for fire, igno- 
rantly handled by one person, may lay waste a whole 
city and cause appalling disaster. Certain deadly 
poisons which, wisely and cleverly used, are most 
helpful in overcoming disease, may be so used as 
to cause nothing but evil. The appetite for food 
unchecked may lead to gluttony and a deadening of 
all the nobler faculties while, if properly subordinated 
and controlled, it is the only way for man to keep 



254 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

himself in the best condition for his highest work. The 
sexual passion is certainly necessary and is not in itself 
evil, but it may become the source of degradation, 
disease and utter ruin. 

Indeed the main cause of the terrible disparity of 
condition that exists in all communities is the different 
manner in which the sexual passion operates in different 
classes. To illustrate this: ''Let us imagine a country 
occupied at one time by a thousand families. Let 
one-half, constituting class A, consist of those who 
are frugal, prudent, self-respecting, sternly moral and 
ambitious for the higher things of life. Let one-half, 
constituting class B, consist of those who are careless, 
ignorant, reckless of consequences and degraded by 
vice. In a dozen generations the progeny of class B, 
which multiplies like rabbits, will be five-sixths of the 
population, while five-sixths of the property, power, 
intellect and spirituality will be vested in the progeny 
of class A." If it were not for the manifest superiority 
of brains over mere muscle; for the fact that a minority, 
capable because of its virtue, can restrain and even 
dominate an immoral and vicious majority; if it were 
not also true that the intemperate and extremely 
profligate disclose a high rate of mortality; if, in fact, 
the death rate in the crowded and squalid parts of 
great cities were not abnormal; if vice did not weaken 
its victims and render them more liable to disease 
and death; if infanticide were not very prevalent — it 



EVIL. 255 

is probable that class B would, in the case supposed, 
have entirely submerged and destroyed class A. 

The greatest evil that confronts man is here dis- 
closed, and it forces the human element in every nation 
to keep up a continual struggle to maintain its standard 
and save its higher Hfe from being extinguished. There 
can be no solution of the problem of evil that does not 
include the control of the sexual passion as its first and 
most important step. Sexuality degraded and per- 
verted is man's greatest curse. Whatever will cure 
or restrain this will necessarily bring about sanity 
in all other directions. 

The training of a child so as to make him a truly 
educated and symmetrically developed human being 
is probably the most difficult task to which we ever 
apply ourselves. So long as children are thoughtlessly 
and recklessly begotten without any regard to these 
difficulties and even without so much as a thought 
as to whether there are any resources to enable these 
children to be properly reared, so long the race must 
face a continuance of those conditions which result 
from the presence of the crude and undisciplined masses 
of men who themselves sin and suffer and infect the 
entire social body with evil as a sort of disease. 

The most impressive fact in social life everywhere 
is the vast number of people who are ignorant of the 
plainest laws of health and well-being; who fail to 
learn anything by repeated experiences; who seem to 



256 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

have no capacity to grapple with even the simplest 
problems of daily life; who drift along like animals 
without the controlling instinct which saves the animal 
from error; who rebel against all personal discipline 
and seem well nigh incapable of self-education. Their 
whole idea of progress is an increase of sensual enjoy- 
ment. Anything that promises more chance for glut- 
tony and the gratification of the sexual desire has thus 
far always and everywhere been popular. 

If all animals and animal-men were as corrupt and 
diseased, as incompetent and imprudent, as fooUsh 
and disobedient to the laws of their nature as is a vast 
part of the typical men, there would be no living on 
the face of the globe that would be worthy of a moment's 
consideration. Humanity ought to take some con- 
solation from the fact that at least the animals and 
animal-men are as a rule healthy, and, within their 
sphere, intelligent and even wise. 

Each individual suffers in part for his own sins, but 
he also suffers in a large degree because of the sins of 
others. Some pay in a marked way the penalty of 
their own individual qualities, but many bear a burden 
for sins that are almost entirely another's, for such 
is the solidarity or social unity of the race that each 
man suffers because of all, and all suffer because of 
each. This necessarily flows from the fact that men 
together constitute an organism the whole of which 



EVIL. 257 

is affected by the disease of any part. Now this class 
of evils is truly a disease or sickness in the different 
members of the social body due to social sins. There 
is no evil of which man has any right to complain 
that can be ascribed to any other cause than his own 
conduct or that of his race in the present or in the past. 

This explanation is not of a sort to give any satis- 
faction to men who are in the grip of these evil-causing 
qualities, but it seems to be the plain truth. Such 
men call loudly for some great external power to save 
them, but there is no power that can do it except the 
men of their own race. They may call and pray and 
beg to a far-off Potentate, outside the world, but it will 
avail nothing. The very first step towards mitigating 
the evils of this world is to come to a realizing sense 
that all responsibility rests on man himself and that it 
is by his efforts alone that the problem must be solved. 

What is called the Devil is really ignorance, preju- 
dice and selfishness in man himself. The only seat 
of authority for the Devil — the personification of 
evil — is thus in the breast of man. The three ele- 
ments are ordinarily found acting together, consti- 
tuting a sort of trinity which is the real source of the 
awful misery of the world. Consider the race preju- 
dices, the national and class prejudices, the religious 
prejudices, and the animosity, bitterness and strife 
growing out of all these. Consider the unfair monopoly 
of trade, the various industrial associations that are 



258 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

mere organized selfishness, the abuse of legislative 
power in the interest of privileged classes, the adminis- 
trative corruption of nations, states and cities, the 
frenzied competition along the whole line of industrial 
life — is it not a terrible picture of greed, cruelty and 
oppression? All of this comes from the ignorance, 
prejudices and selfishness of the men who make up 
society. Whenever we see these qualities at work 
doing social mischief, creating evil conditions, leading 
to wretched misery, let us say in a word that it is 
the work of the Devil. When the political orator is 
appealing to those qualities in his audience, we know 
what he is invoking and we know that, to the extent 
that he succeeds, the Devil will rule the community. 
To overcome the Devil we must overcome these quali- 
ties in men, remembering that it is much easier to call 
the Devil in than it is to drive him out. 

The passions and appetites are not bad in and of 
themselves but are indeed very good, valuable and 
necessary. Without them we cannot see how there 
would be any real satisfaction in our Hfe; without 
them we can hardly conceive our life as having the 
possibility of a moral and spiritual side to it. It is 
only as they run away with us, are ill-regulated, un- 
governed and uncontrolled, that they have any sinister 
aspect whatever. Their control is the very source 
and occasion of all development and virtue. They 



EVIL. 259 

furnish the opportunity, the test, the measure, so that 
we cannot see how a man who did not feel what passion 
and appetite were could by any possibility know 
what virtue was. He could not even intellectually 
conceive the latter except as he succeeded in intel- 
lectually conceiving the former. Thus it becomes true 
that '' the world is all the richer for having a Devil in it, 
so long as we keep our feet on his neck, but only so long.'^ 
Now in all this there is nothing of what is properly 
called mystery. It would indeed be strange if, under 
all the conditions, things were otherwise. Mystery 
is always connected with some manifestation of the 
eternal force, always with an affirmative fact. Now 
evil is not a force of any sort and has no sort of con- 
nection with God. It exists in the absence of divine 
forces. Thus, to illustrate, darkness is not a force 
manifestation but is entirely due to the absence of 
fight, which is a force manifestation. Cold is not a 
force manifestation but is caused by the absence of 
heat, which is a force manifestation. There is no mys- 
tery about cold and darkness, for afi the mystery is 
connected with light and heat. Darkness and cold 
may be said to kiU plant and animal life, but death 
is due, not to any force in them, but to the absence of 
light and heat, which are necessary to sustain such 
life. Life demands active, affirmative force. In nega- 
tion of such force it dies. Evil is the negation of right- 
eousness and no social state can be otherwise than 
miserable which is destitute of righteousness. 



BOOK THIRD. 



RELEASE FROM BURDENS. 



I. Nirvana. 
II. Beauty and Art. 
ni. Immortality. 



BOOK THIRD. 



NIRVANA. 



Nirvana is a much-abused because a much-mis- 
understood term. It has very generally been taken 
to mean absolute annihilation, a revolt against self- 
existence, and as such is a morbid, pessimistic and 
insane idea, not true to the facts universally disclosed 
by the life and nature of man. The love of existence, 
and desire for immortality as being endless existence, 
is natural and characteristic of man. And yet there 
is a sense in which the word is profoundly true and is 
applicable to the daily life of millions of men. Its 
rational meaning rests upon a keen and searching 
analysis of our own experiences, without involving 
any undue subtlety, and when rightly understood is 
the explanation of phenomena which every man will 
find in his own daily life as a constant and unescapable 
element thereof. There is indeed hardly one other 
word that is so interpretative of our daily life and 
common experiences, so that, until it is clearly per- 
ceived, a man can hardly understand himself. While 



264 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

he incessantly seeks it, craves it and yearns after it, 
he does this instinctively and almost without percep- 
tion of what he is really doing. He apparently cannot 
refrain from such seeking and in proportion to his 
success seems to be the degree of his happiness. 

Used in a rational sense, Nirvana refers to a state 
of mind in which, while retaining all our powers and 
faculties, we seem to lose consciousness of personal 
existence and to be living on a different plane in utter 
forgetfulness of the body. It is, therefore, for the time 
being, an extinction of such individual life, a suspen- 
sion, obliteration or loss of such ordinary consciousness. 
It is a sort of self-oblivion due to rising for the time 
into the impersonal and universal. It is a forgetfulness 
of self, which self is there all the time but is no longer 
assertive and dominant. It is essentially a leaving 
of self, a stepping out of one's self, and this every- 
body is constantly doing if his life is interesting and 
happy. All the moral and intellectual forces appear 
strongest and best in men who most perfectly forget 
self. Every intellectual man must, in all his highest 
work, do this in an exceptional degree — the lawyer 
in his case, the author in his book, the preacher in his 
sermon, the physician in his patient, the scientist in 
his laboratory. It is indeed true that the moment we 
plunge into any real, serious occupation we necessarily 
forget self and in a proper sense happiness rests upon 
and demands this self-oblivion, which is Nirvana. 



NIRVANA. 265 

Many words indicating happiness of an unusual 
character indicate this idea of temporary self-extinc- 
tion. Thus ecstasy is defined as the state of being taken 
out of self, becoming unconscious of ordinary objects 
and impressions. Rapture is being carried away from 
one's self by agreeable excitement. To charm, to 
entrance, to fascinate, to enchant, to bewitch, to cap- 
tivate, all imply that the person is under a magic spell 
overcoming ordinary consciousness and for the moment 
extinguishing self. To be transported by joy is to be 
carried away from self by that emotion. A re very 
is a waking dream in which the person is unconscious 
of self. To muse is to be absent of mind, to be so 
engaged in contemplation as not to be aware of 
passing scenes, that is, to be out of and away from self. 
Enthusiasm, in its early meaning, is an inspiration as 
if by a divine power, whereby you rise out of and 
above your ordinary self. 

Physical Ufe is man's necessary basis and yet it is 
in a true sense his cross. He seeks to forget for a while 
its weight and burden. Now this escape may be for an 
hour or a day, or it may become a reasonably perma- 
nent and normal state of mind that he has reached by 
reason of having risen into another plane where he is 
free from the haunting consciousness. This involves the 
practical extinction of the lower self, escape from 
the slavery of the lower nature into the freedom of 



266 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

the higher nature. It is a sort of happiness, a sense 
of freedom, a perception of life values and the -posses- 
sion of resources that make life worth while, which only 
exist on the true plane of human living, using that 
term in its high sense. 

As soon as man has passed beyond that stage where 
he is essentially mere animal, he instinctively craves 
this Nirvana, feels the need of rising into humanity 
as an escape from the burden of existence on the lower 
plane. He has a vague, instinctive, semi-conscious 
feeling which causes an incessant effort to escape from 
this crude lower self, to extinguish it and forget it. 

Man lives in a state of perpetual restlessness. He 
seeks nothing except for himself and yet he flies from 
nothing so eagerly as from himself. Whenever he has 
leisure time he studies only how to throw it away. 
His happiness seems to consist in oblivion, in some 
amusement that shall hide him from himself. Increased 
leisure means increased necessity for diversion, seeking 
by devotion to external things to drown the conscious- 
ness of being alive. To have life all leisure would thus 
be insupportable and would make men most miserable 
since it would be impossible to devise enough forms 
of amusement completely to fill such a void. They 
must perpetually be kept from thinking of themselves. 
The rich man going to his country seat, with abundance 
of money and servants to supply all his wants, may be 
and often is very wretched because he has leisure to 



NIRVANA. 267 

think of self without hindrance. Hence men love so 
ardently the whirl and tumult of the world. Hence 
imprisonment is so much dreaded. Hence so few 
persons can endure solitude. Hence the multitude 
prefer the crowded city with its manifold distractions 
and vulgar diversions to the serenity of rural life. 
Hence a man will pass his days without weariness in 
daily play for a trifling stake whom you would make 
wretched by giving to him each day the winnings of 
the day on condition of his not playing. 

The rich man could easily buy fish or game in the 
market but this would not call him off from himself; 
while the chase after it will do so. Thus men will hunt 
for whole days, with great exposure and even hard- 
ships, for what they would hardly take as a gift. As 
soon as it is secured they have no further interest in 
it, but are off seeking for more excitement and amuse- 
ment elsewhere. The hunting trip is thus really a hunt 
for Nirvana. With most men life is thus a game the 
object of which is to throw away their life, seeking 
conditions that prevent their ever having to think and 
reflect upon themselves — avoiding all self-inspection. 

No animal or animal-man ever has this feeling. It is 
characteristic of the true man type and is essentially 
a desire for that tranquil, contented state of mind 
which for man cannot exist except on the human plane, 
which is intellectual and spiritual. Now, if the human 
status always meant one and the same thing, then, 



268 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

as soon as he became human, man would have Nirvana, 
but, as elsewhere, there are all gradations from those 
who are just barely human to the most highly developed. 
Therefore this yearning and craving clings to all humans 
except the small class of the highest, and so it is prac- 
tically distinctive of all men and of very nearly all 
humans. It manifests itself acutely as discontent with 
existence and results in ennui, boredom and weariness 
of spirit. It impUes intellect enough to be disgusted 
with what you have but not enough to know how to 
create different conditions; intellect enough to be dimly 
aware that there is a problem but not enough to be 
able to solve it. It means lack of development; lack 
of resources and vital interest; lack of power to 
entertain one's self; lack of affirmative force; weakness, 
indifference, listlessness. 

The coarsest men find Nirvana in drink and rough 
sports, in the excitement of gambling and all those 
forms of diversion which make no demand for any 
special degree of ability. When a day comes for rest 
or recreation the man must go somewhere. He must 
go where what he sees will take up his thoughts and 
save him from falling back on himself. If he be unable 
thus to go, he says that it has been a very long, dull 
day, nothing going on, nothing to do. He says that 
he hates hoHdays. He has been alone with himself 
and he finds himself very stupid company. He does 
not so phrase it in words, but the real fact is that he 



NIRVANA. 269 

is tired of himself, wants to get away from his own 
uninteresting, undeveloped self. So it runs through 
all the gamut of life. 

The one real escape for all men and most humans 
is work, some occupation that absorbs the attention 
and leads to self-forgetfulness, which is temporarily 
self -extinction. Employment is thus the great social 
necessity. Good, steady work is called a great blessing 
and it is truly such, for it produces a good and steady 
period of self -extinction. The criminals in the prison 
must have something to do or they will become luna- 
tics merely from confronting their own wretched selves. 
Work will often lift them out of themselves and allow 
them to get rid of the evils of existence, for a while 
at least, and then, being physically tired, they may 
sleep and so for many hours entirely forget themselves, 
be entirely rid of the evil of existence, for sleep is the 
only perfect Nirvana for such men. It is indeed quite 
imiversal. Men go to the play, the games, the opera, 
the concert hall and the lecture room to be helped to 
forget themselves for a while. A novel receives its 
highest encomium when the reader says that it made 
him forget himself. The orator and the preacher are 
popular when they do the same thing for men. 

Man's higher development is closely connected with 
this yearning for Nirvana, which, leading to discontent 
with existence as it is and causing an imperious demand 
for something that shall occupy his time, impels him 



270 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

to use all his powers to ameliorate his condition and 
secure happiness. By experience and observation he 
finds that no abiding pleasure comes from anything 
but the development of his faculties. Rising into the 
intellectual life he becomes absorbed by his investi- 
gation and thought. Study becomes the pleasure which 
satisfies his cravings and saves him from ennui. Keep 
men in the atmosphere of high thought and it matters 
not what their doctrines or philosophy may be, we 
know pretty well what their lives must be. Men thus 
absorbed, and filled with a noble enthusiasm for truth, 
have that which, more perfectly than anything else, 
will save them from feeling that existence is a burden. 

To know and judge a man's real character we must 
know what he does with his leisure time, that is to 
say, how does he seek his Nirvana? When a man loses 
his place in the business world, it is not merely the 
loss of wages, serious as that may be, but it is the loss 
of Nirvana. So, too, a man, having become wealthy, 
retires from business to enjoy his leisure, as he thinks, 
but he misses his only Nirvana and so must return to 
the treadmill, as he cannot, with his undeveloped men- 
tality, be happy without it. 

The true and developed human has so escaped the 
trammels of his lower nature as to live as if he did not 
possess it. He is in a higher sphere of existence which 
has its own pleasures, to secure which he only asks 
to have leisure, freedom from those very things which 



NIRVANA. 271 

to the mass of men are true and necessary anodynes. 
He is in a world so full of interest on its intellectual 
side that, while he indeed rests on a physical basis, 
he really lives above it. He lives in the spirit and, in 
the old phrase, walks with God. He does not yearn 
for Nirvana, for he possesses it. He has so subordinated 
his lower impulses, passions, appetites and coarse pro- 
pensities that they seem to be extinguished. Dying 
to this lower nature, as it were, he rises by a new birth 
into another life, which is richer, truer and more abun- 
dant. He has put off the old Adam, the crude, natural 
man and entered into the new man, which is Christus. 
The restless craving disappears. He rests in content- 
ment and peace rising out of the joy of possession. 
Toilsome effort has ended in joyful achievement. The 
triumph came through long and weary days of struggle 
and involved many a stumble, but the victory is 
decisive. He has won the crown of Ufe which for him 
shall ever grow towards greater satisfaction, for he has 
truly reached Nirvana. In all that he does or can do 
that is great and good and beautiful, he feels that he 
is but the medium of a force that is higher than him- 
self. The feeling that this is true springs from the 
consciousness of the presence of immanent spirit 
whereby one perceives that he is only the user of the 
force but not its source. He lends voice and hand, 
but he feels that all his work, so far as it is worthy 
and remarkable, rests essentially on spirit, which 



272 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

alone renders it possible. Such a belief extinguishes all 
self-regarding vanity, for this must needs yield when 
the spiritual side of life is discerned. Contentment 
of the truest and deepest sort flows from self-surrender 
to this force which we feel has the absolute right to 
receive our services. In this way alone is man set free 
from the haunting consciousness of self as a burden 
borne without purpose or result. 



II. 

BEAUTY AND ART. 

No man may define wherein beauty consists, what 
it is or how it is that we are able to have any sense or 
appreciation of the beautiful. So far as we have the 
feeling at all, it is due to that singular capacity im- 
manent in us which we have called spirit. Like every 
form of force manifestation it must forever be inex- 
plicable and mysterious. All that we know is the fact 
that there is in most men this power to discern what 
we call beauty and that in a few men there is power 
to create what we feel to be beautiful. 

If a man has not this capacity no one can make him 
reahze what it is. If he has it in some degree, it may 
perhaps be developed by the aid of others, but the 
germinal seed must be in the man as one of the conse- 
quences flowing from the immanence of spirit, or it is 
not in him at all and cannot then be evoked by any 
means whatsoever. Like all his other capacities he 
has it or he has it not and that is all we know about it. 
Why some have it and why others do not we may not 
understand. Like all the rest it also exists in endless 
variations of degree from the very sUghtest to the very 
highest. All human capacity is mystery beyond all 
analysis. 



274 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

This power to perceive beauty finds its natural and 
first field of exercise in the contemplation of the world 
itself. To the normal man the world is in itself a 
beautiful place, exciting his admiration at every step 
he takes. It is not a dreary wilderness through 
which he is to make a pilgrimage towards a world 
that will be worthy of his admiration, but it is now 
and here the maximum of all that is beautiful, glorious 
and sublime. It is the marvelous manifestation of 
universal force. 

Man, then, lives surrounded by the beautiful. The 
dimly lighted forest with its noble trees shadowing 
forth the cathedral idea, the falling cataract, the beach 
with its white breaking surf, the sky at night filled 
with its myriad stars like eternal eyes looking out of 
space, the glory of sunrise and sunset, the countless 
varieties of landscape, orchards in blossom, the blue 
sky with its fleecy clouds, — all these appeal to man's 
sense of the beautiful. Not only to man's eye comes 
the appeal, but the ear has its sense of what is beauti- 
ful and hears countless sounds in nature which suggest 
music and its infinite harmonies. So, too, the mind 
has its perception of beauty — thoughts and ideas 
resulting in visions, dreams, poetic fancies and ethical 
meditations, and this is felt to be akin to beauty in 
its other phases. To all the senses and to the mind 
comes this appeal summoning man to the shrine of 
the beautiful. 



BEAUTY AND ART. 275 

Deriving his standards and earliest conceptions from 
the contemplation of nature, man's noblest work is 
to create new types of beauty, and this whole field of 
his creative effort is called art, which is merely his 
endeavor to give expression to his sense of beauty. 
It is individualized force seeking to imitate the uni- 
versal force. Those who exercise this creative power 
in the highest degree we call men of genius. Many 
may enjoy but few may create this highest beauty of 
art, for this degree of capacity is rarely found, but it 
does exist and has existed for ages, showing to man 
the possibilities of his nature. What he individually 
is in his little degree becomes genius when its high 
development is reached and thus genius discloses to man 
the beauty of his own nature, shows him the dignity 
and greatness of that force which is immanent in him. 

The field of art is very wide and varied. Within its 
boundaries comes all of man's work in which he takes 
pride and satisfaction. A¥e generally speak of art in 
a very restricted sense and, for precision in thinking^ 
we must always do so, but we must not forget that the 
artistic force is an element very common and indeed 
universal in the life of man. The precision and uniform 
action of a machine gives to the intelUgent beholder 
the feeling that all this is beautiful. The deUcacy of 
adjustment, the wonderful adaptation of all the parts 
to secure the result, all this he feels is one form of art, 
and it truly is, for it expresses the sense of beauty in 
the field of mechanics. 



276 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

Led on by his desire to express this love and sense of 
beauty, man has enriched in countless ways the world 
he lives in. He has filled it with pictures and sculpture; 
with cathedrals and the izmumerable creations of 
architecture; with noble literatures and sciences and 
industries; with symphonies and all the works of the 
great masters of music. In these humanity finds its 
expression. They are its additions to the means where- 
by the individual may be inspired, stimulated and 
consoled. All beauty is resultant from the operation 
of cosmic force, so that art merely denotes that part 
of the beautiful which results from this force as it is 
incarnated in man. All beauty and therefore all art 
must be attributed to God. 

What then is the true office and function of art and 
beauty? It is this. The beautiful in nature and in 
art, using that term in its broadest sense, furnishes to 
those who are qualified to receive it the most refined 
and highest type of Nirvana, and this is the reason 
why men seek and ever will seek to realize the beauti- 
ful. It is the best, purest and noblest of all the means 
of forgetting self, for losing consciousness of the burden 
of existence. To be qualified to be affected by the 
beautiful a man must have in himself some of the very 
essence or cardinal quality of beauty. For those only 
is it Nirvana in a high sense. Beauty does indeed 
speak in the one language that is well-nigh universal 
but it speaks clearly only to those who already know 
the language. 



BEAUTY AND ART. 277 

The true artist, in his happier moments, is capable 
of losing his own individuality in ecstatic contempla- 
tion of the idea embodied in genuine art or in the 
beauty of nature itself. He becomes absorbed into 
it and identified with its essence. He forgets himself, 
is no longer conscious of his separate existence. In 
this mental absorption caused by the contemplation 
of beauty the individual life is for the moment at an 
end. It is that extinction which constitutes Nirvana. 
What is true in a high sense of the artist is true in a 
lesser degree of many. They, too, forget themselves 
when music entrances or poetry rouses their nobler 
feeling or art introduces them to a new world. They 
become mere eye or ear, that is, pure intellect, free 
from all disturbance of passion or desire. All esthetic 
perception and emotion implies this entire forgetful- 
ness of self, this mental absorption. 

Beauty and art come thus as a very true and perfect 
source of Nirvana. For the time we are released from 
the ignoble pressure of life. We merely behold, and 
contemplation is its own sufficient reward. We are 
lifted out of self and live for a while as an impersonal 
force in the atmosphere of pure thought. We escape 
from the body and forget that we have it. Such is 
the beneficent power and secret charm of beauty and 
art as felt by those who are able to perceive and 
appreciate it. Before these man stands as if at a 
shrine of the mysterious and universal. 



III. 

IMMORTALITY. 

During all the ages reflecting man has contemplated 
death and has asked if it is the end. Does he live for 
a few years and then pass utterly away or is there a 
survival and continuance of that which he feels to be 
his own distinctive self? We know that the body is 
to be entirely disintegrated and resolved back into its 
elemental atoms. With these physical substances, the 
reflecting man feels no necessary association, although 
now clearly dependent upon them for his continued 
existence. He loses a limb, or all his limbs, and 
does not feel that any diminution of the real and true 
self has occurred. He is poorer, indeed, by the loss 
of tools which might have been used, but he remains 
unchanged, for he is an indivisible unit, dependent 
in certain ways upon his body but not a part of it. 
He finds in his very inmost nature a psychical essence 
which renders him capable of extraordinary and con- 
tinuous development. After reflection, based on ob- 
servation and experience, he is forced to believe that 
this is no part of his body, is not localized in any part 
thereof, and yet it may maintain itself in apparent 
ascendancy over his body, may control, coordinate and 



IMMORTALITY. 279 

adjust all his individual powers to secure certain results 
which he has planned. Through it he may conceive 
ideals and seek to realize them even at the cost of 
his bodily ease, and even in direct antagonism to his 
physical cravings, appetites and passions. Through 
all this there seems slowly to come into existence a 
self, of whose growth he is conscious, for he looks back 
and discerns its earlier stages and knows that it has 
steadily been developing into what it is to-day. Through 
it he has his ambitions for the future, to realize which 
he becomes more and more willing to sacrifice the claims 
of the body. More and more complete may become 
the ascendancy of the psychical self, until the body 
is virtually its servant, until the contest with appetite 
and passion is ended and the ethical plane of life is 
natural and normal. This is the psychical self developed 
from the potency present at birth. This, if anything, 
survives at death, and so the question of survival per- 
tains only to those who have developed such a self. 
Each man at birth is, in every essential sense, purely 
animal, except that he has a potential spirit capacity 
which, like a seed, depends upon various subsequent 
conditions for its development into anything that shall 
have any value or significance. It is as if there were 
in the child, wrapped up and concealed, a germ, charac- 
terless at the time and not discoverable by any means 
whatsoever. The years of man's life are the period 
during which this germ is developed or is quenched 



280 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and lost. He necessarily begins as animal, passes on 
to the status of animal-man, enjoying the irresponsible 
and so-called happy days of childhood. He then reaches 
the status of man and is at once confronted by the real 
problems of life. He either remains in this condition, 
constantly perplexed by problems which he never 
adequately meets and solves, or he passes on to the 
human status characterized by successful development. 
In all this he obeys or disobeys the law carried within 
his own nature. He has a possible self at the start, of 
which he is dimly conscious; a sort of potential per- 
sonality which he may or may not bring to fruition. 
Progress for him is self-realization. If he reaches this, 
he does it by constantly striving after and in a measur- 
able degree securing higher ethical conditions which give 
rise in him to will and character as a psychical force. 
These are peculiar and personal to him and, in a sense, 
are created by his own persistent effort, using the ever- 
increasing and expanding spirit immanent within him. 
If there be anything that survives at his physical death 
it must be this developed psychical force which repre- 
sents his life work and is the result of all his days. It 
appears as conscience, will, character and reason and 
upon the quality of these rests the verdict passed on the 
life at its conclusion. Now, whatever happens at death 
is neither a punishment nor reward. That which sur- 
vives does so because it is, in its nature, fitted therefor, 
because, imder the law, it must survive. Whatever 



IMMORTALITY. 281 

perishes does so because there is nothing that can sur- 
vive, because there is no spiritual vitaUty. Animals, 
animal-men and men are terms that describe beings 
who are destitute of any developed psychic force and 
so they pass away. The human class, which consists 
of all those who have developed true personality, in- 
volving high character, who are essentially incarnations 
of spirit, may survive. 

Immortality lies in a field beyond all observation and 
experience and so it is necessarily outside the field of 
true knowledge. Because we are in some degree pos- 
sessed by spirit we become dimly conscious of its pres- 
ence and, from this adumbration, may arise a belief 
in survival, resting on these suggestions or intimations. 
It is a dim consciousness of kinship with the universal 
force itself and, so far as it goes, may be a true pre- 
monition of a fact. It is purely the result of reflection, 
based on this vague, instinctive feeling flowing from 
immanent spirit and it is of necessity tentative and 
speculative. It is, however, possible, and even probable, 
that elemental spirit may become so individualized 
as to be strong enough, as such, to survive the destruc- 
tion of the body. Dependent absolutely for its indi- 
viduality, in all its earlier stages, on the physical, it 
may reach a point of growth when it ceases to be so 
dependent and when it is literally born again into a new 
realm of life, in which the psychical is capable of exist- 
ing independently and absolutely. 



282 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

We may never be able accurately to perceive just 
when this point is reached in any given case but it 
would seem that it should coincide with that vague 
point which we say designates the rise of the individual 
into the true human life. In other words, using our 
symbolic phrases, man survives when and as he becomes 
and is part of the Christus. The secret cosmic purpose 
may be this very individualization of elemental spirit, 
this effort to segregate spirit, as a universal force, into 
new and definite forms not otherwise producible, and 
serving some end in the cosmic scheme not now to be 
comprehended by us. 

It would seem that there is but one line of actual 
experience which is suggestive and interpretative of the 
mystery of a possible future existence, and that is the 
constant craving and search for what we have called 
Nirvana. If any person will read carefully the two 
preceding chapters, he will find that, the more he re- 
flects on the facts there presented, the more remarkable 
he will be forced to consider them. In the status called 
Nirvana, we seem to become impersonal. While we 
retain and exercise all of our developed powers and 
instinctively use all other capacities and faculties, we 
for the time give no thought at all to the fact that we 
personally exist. We seem to forget our identity and 
simply live in the ideas that absorb us and in this im- 
personal status we find our completest happiness. We 
seem to be mere mind detached from the body, and 



IMMORTALITY. 283 

the more perfect the detachment, the more perfect seems 
to be the satisfaction we afterwards feel that we have 
derived from the experience. At the time we may 
give no thought to the fact that we are happy, and 
this is always true of the highest forms of such happi- 
ness. We, in a sense, lose our life to find it in this im- 
personal way, in a realm apart from and different from 
the physical. The capacity to do this is always a 
developed psychical capacity, which, therefore, implies 
and means an impersonal existence, which does, it is 
tme, rest upon personality but entirely forgets it in 
the intensity of occupation with the ideal which seizes 
us and submerges the lesser and commonplace sense 
of personality. If there is any clue to the nature of 
existence after death, it would seem to be found in 
this status of impersonal happiness, growing out of, 
and only rendered possible by, developed personality. 
It may be that in this way what men have called 
heavenly happiness is foreshadowed in the psychical 
happiness of this life. He who has no such capacity 
in this world cannot expect to have it anywhere else, 
and the degree in which he develops it here must in- 
dicate all future possibilities. AU culture and develop- 
ment lead a man away from the intense sense of his 
own restricted personality to a higher and higher 
degree of impersonal thought, to a status in which man 
the individual loses his keen sense of animal existence 
and enters into the contemplation of the universal, 



284 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

with an almost entire indifference to the loss of his 
ordinary personality. He could only reach this status 
of impersonal culture by and through the development 
of personality, but, when he has reached it, he is ready 
and willing to throw away the ladder by which he has 
chmbed up. What we call personality, in the popular 
sense, is like the scaffolding we put up to enable us to 
construct a building. We could not create the new 
building without this temporary structure outside of 
and surrounding it, but, when the building stands 
completed, we take down the scaffolding as no longer 
necessary and useful. Nor do we ever regret its dis- 
appearance, for we know that it has served its purpose 
and ought to vanish to permit the building to be seen 
in its own beauty of design. We live in the finished 
building and in time forget that any scaffolding was 
ever needed. 

The presence of psychic force seems always to render 
this impersonal status possible in some degree and we 
have called it Nirvana. Now if we conceive this as a 
permanent, continuous status, unbroken by returns 
to the status of ordinary, conscious personality, it 
may be that herein we may find our only way of con- 
ceiving the conditions characteristic of survival after 
death. The temporary disappearance of the ordinary 
personality followed by its return, which impUes the 
presence of the body as reasserting itself, may fore- 
shadow the entire disappearance of what we call our 



IMMORTALITY. 285 

sense of individuality, which does not return because 
the body which previously has caused such return is 
then gone, leaving the psychical product of the de- 
veloped personahty in this impersonal status of pure 
psychical existence. In Nirvana we are certainly 
acutely conscious and perhaps are so in an unusual or 
even maximum degree. The only element that is 
lacking is our consciousness of the body, which is the 
personality of sensations and physical reactions. In 
our happiest moments, face to face with art, entranced 
by music or rapt in contemplation, we never complain 
of this loss of our common personality, and if we can 
gladly dispense with it for an hour why cannot we 
give it up forever? Why should we look forward and 
complain if we are to lose or be deprived of that which 
we are constantly trying to lose, especially when we 
have repeatedly found our greatest happiness in those 
very hours in which for the time being we have lost it? 
It seems to be a fact that the highest impersonal 
status must necessarily rest upon the profoundest sort 
of personality which, because it is profound, transcends 
the ordinary limitations and rises into the universal. 
We always rate a man's work in the intellectual and 
spiritual field by the degree in which it reveals this 
universal and impersonal characteristic. The great 
genius gives us a work of art and beauty and we call 
it classic because it is eternal. It appeals to men in 
all times and all places because it is free from the petty 



286 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

and personal note and carries us out of ourselves into 
a nobler realm of idealism in which we see all things 
in a clearer and purer light. Such work we say is 
greater than the man who did it because it seems to 
transcend his ordinary personality and is as if made by 
one who, being out of the flesh, had beheld a vision of 
all things as they really are. A perfect personality 
would realize the impersonal status in a perfect and 
absolute degree and so we have the apparent paradox 
of the highest personality resulting in entire imperson- 
ality or universality of thought and purpose. To see 
this clearly and adequately is, it seems to me, to come, 
as near as it is possible, to a true conception of a future 
psychical existence. The sense of personality is very 
largely a sense of limitations and imperfections con- 
stantly forced upon the attention of a being who aspires 
to get beyond them and escape from them. Growth 
and development ought, then, to diminish this sense, 
and so, in theory, should, if carried far enough, cause 
its disappearance when being has reached the stage of 
the impersonal and universal. Is not this exactly what 
does happen whenever we reach any high degree of 
Nirvana in our daily life? When we listen to the most 
inspiring and absorbing music do we not lose all sense 
of limitation and forget all ideas of imperfection? Are 
we not for a moment lifted out of the personal and put 
in touch with the infinite? Conceive this as a perma- 
nent and continuous status and try to realize its full 



IMMORTALITY. 287 

significance. You may not compass much for it is cer- 
tainly a great mystery, but do you not dimly see that 
here may be the clue to an idea that has enormous 
possibilities and do you not in a way perceive that the 
loss of our ordinary personality may be no loss at all 
but a great gain? 

As to the specific mode or manner or duration of such 
survival it is useless even to speculate, for if spirit gives 
a dim intimation of the fact, and if this is reliable and 
trustworthy as instincts generally are, it is clear that 
spirit gives no further disclosure than this and in the 
nature of things cannot be expected to do so. 

Without actual observation and experience it would 
be absolutely impossible for any man, even the most 
gifted, to foresee or even imagine such a phenomenon 
as occurs when a worm wraps itself in its cocoon or 
chrysalis and seems to die. We know, as a fact, that 
it comes out as a beautiful butterfly, that where before 
it crept now it flies and that in every way there is a 
most wonderful development. If we did not know it 
as a fact it would be inconceivable and imbelievable 
in every one of its phases. By analogy spirit survival 
may involve changes so great as to be at present beyond 
all possible comprehension by us. It seems clear, 
however, that the physical does not survive; that, 
when spirit is through with the body, it is through 
with it forever; that what may survive is the invisible, 
intangible, intellectual and spiritual element; that 



288 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

when there is no effective development of this there 
is nothing that can survive. 

What spirit is, as we possess it or are possessed by it, 
we do not in the least degree know nor can we fathom 
the mode or manner of its presence in us, even when we 
feel conscious of such presence, even when we feel that 
it is our very life. Why, then, should we expect to com- 
prehend how this subtle force survives, even if we feel 
instinctively that it does, and feel that a vague belief, 
based on the instinct, is truly rational? If it is true 
that man is a part of the whole previous order of 
development, it is also true that he stands in a relation 
to it that forbids his being merged in it and excepts 
him from the full operation of its laws, and therefore 
presumably from its destinies. He is the apparent 
end or product of a process, and for that very reason 
he is severed from the process. He is the fulfilment 
of one set of laws, the crowning glory of one sort of 
manifestations and, by analogy, it may be but the 
very beginning of another sort. Highest in his present 
environment he may be the lowest in another and 
future stage and these stages may run on in a long 
series. 

Man truly seems to be the climax of an evolution. 
At any prior stage of this an observer, who knew only 
what had happened up to that point, could never by 
any possibility have divined the next stage. No con- 
templation of all inorganic forms could have led to an 



IMMORTALITY. 289 

idea of plant life. No study of that could have given an 
idea of even the lowest animal life and no observation 
of that could have opened a vision of the higher ani- 
mals. So, again, no study of all evolution up to this 
point could have disclosed the faintest conception of 
man as seen in his present highest human development. 
Each stage has its peculiar characteristic, and this is 
really new, and though it grows out of what precedes 
there is nothing in all that precedes to show what the 
next new development is to be. Now if all life is an 
evolution, as it certainly is, and if man is at present 
the climax, it is reasonable to suppose that another 
great step remains, that what we have begun to know 
as intellect and spirit goes on to a new and inconceivable 
phase, as much greater than what we know as our 
present stage transcends the purely animal stage. At 
no stage is the knowledge of the next a possibility, 
and it is only in the case of man that there is even a 
premonition of it. For absolutely the first time in the 
long duration of this evolution man begins to query 
and speculate with a dim consciousness of another 
stage. At no prior point has there been even a glimmer 
of such an idea, for never was there any capacity to 
study the past, to reflect on the present or to speculate 
on the future. It is more rational to believe that the 
evolution goes on than that it ceases with the produc- 
tion of such an imperfect result as man. It is more in 
harmony with the stupendous scheme of the universe 



290 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

as even we have come to conceive it. There is appar- 
ently no Umit to what it is possible for cosmic force 
to achieve, and for man to say that, while he is clearly 
the highest form of life on this globe, there is assuredly 
nothing higher — that, while he is the climax of an 
evolutionary process, that process stops with him 
as he now is — cannot be called rational. We cannot 
indeed know it as a fact but it seems to be legitimate 
speculation. If the highest human conditions could 
have been reached along instinctive lines, the whole 
history of man would have to be regarded as one pro- 
longed and terrible tragedy, as unjustifiable as it would 
then have been needless. If the end could have been 
reached without the hideous blunders and cruel suffer- 
ing attendant upon the evolution of the human, then 
the conscious adoption of the plan we see disclosed 
in that history was the most stupendous crime that 
can even be conceived, and from such an idea we 
instinctively recoil. We cannot believe any such thing, 
for it is simply impossible that it should be true. We 
are then compelled to believe that the cosmic force 
manifests itself as it does through some inherent neces- 
sity in its own nature. The development of man's 
psychical powers, the rise of his consciousness, serves 
or is to serve finally some end so transcendental that 
at present we cannot grasp it at all. It is, however, 
inconceivable that this protracted struggle to rise 
towards and into a field of rational life is to go for 



IMMORTALITY. 291 

nothing, is to serve no ulterior and undisclosed purpose. 
If such be the case, then the fight made by man for 
spiritual development would be a cosmic tragedy, in 
comparison with which all the tragedies composed 
by men are but comedies. We feel instinctively that 
this is not so. We cannot accept such an idea and this 
feeling is universal and necessary. It is a genuine 
instinct and so we may trust it. 

The entire evolutionary process is but the play of 
forces, a quickening into life, a taking on of higher 
and more complex forms until man is reached, who, as 
compared with all that precedes, has new conditions, 
new laws, new methods and new ends of his own. He 
creates his mental environment, controls natural laws 
to his own ends and purposes, but he does all this 
imder serious limitations. He realizes all these keenly 
and aspires to greater power and higher knowledge. 
His ambition is boundless, while his capacity to 
achieve is limited. Why should there not be a stage 
beyond, moving towards the more perfect development 
of those powers which even now seem to be so mar- 
velous? Shall we believe that we have seen all because 
what we have seen is so transcendently great? Is it 
not rational to believe that, for those who are ade- 
quately developed, there lies beyond a much more 
remarkable existence than any now possible of con- 
ception? May it not be true that, having then ceased 
the struggle for physical existence, there are conditions 



292 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

that all make for intellectual and spiritual growth 
such as to cause all our present opportunities to seem 
insignificant and childish? We do not know in the 
least what is possible in such directions, so hemmed 
in are we by the coarseness of the flesh. The very 
things that have been may be those that shall not be. 
We may very properly assume, frankly and even boldly, 
the possibility of a state of existence entirely psychical 
in constitution, in which material conditions have 
neither place nor meaning. We may predicate purely 
psychical relations, declaring that the distinction 
between physical and psychical phenomena is one of a 
different order from all other known distinctions and 
that it transcends all others. We may foresee the 
survival of present psychical phenomena, utterly freed 
from all material conditions, and of this we cannot 
now form even the faintest conception. Exact evi- 
dence under our present conditions must always remain 
inaccessible, but this does not necessarily destroy the 
rationality of the belief. It must always remain with- 
out that sort of support and must be regarded as not 
needing it, as beyond the range of all scientific criti- 
cism. To hold it need not affect in the least our scien- 
tific habit of mind or influence our scientific conclusions, 
all of which rest in another realm entirely distinct 
and apart. Scientific habits and methods may in the 
future aid and strengthen our belief but assuredly 
they never can destroy it. 



BOOK FOURTH. 



THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 



I. The Riddle op Existence. 
II. The Mission of Humanity. 



BOOK FOURTH. 



I. 

THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 

From the earliest days man has been asking of the 
universe the question why, seeking to solve what he 
has felt to be the riddle of existence. Not only has 
he never solved it, but he has never got any answer 
at all, and it is reasonably certain that he never will. 
To man's everlasting query as to any purpose in its 
existence the universe gives absolutely no reply. It 
is dumb. It has no reply, for it exists because it does. 
It was, it is, it will be. That is all. I am that I am. 
Seek no further. 

It is not strange that man cannot answer so stu- 
pendous a question. The marvel is that such a tiny 
speck as man should ever ask it. That a mere atom 
should seek to divine the mystery of a universe that 
is infinite and eternal is indeed a marvel. Man who 
does not know what anything really is, but only sees 
and knows it as a manifestation of an inscrutable 
power, ought not to expect to understand the universal 
purpose even if such there be. 



296 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

An otherwise dumb universe seems to rise to con- 
sciousness only in man. Human mind, the crowning 
manifestation of the eternal force, surveys the entire 
field of creative energy and, itself being but a fragment 
or spark of that force, seeks to question and to analyze 
the whole, of which it is but a part. It cannot do it, 
but the mere attempt shows the origin of mind and 
its kinship with the eternal cosmic power. It is thus 
a great proof of the dignity of man's nature that he 
ever attempted the puzzle at all, that he ever felt the 
desire for a solution or even raised the query. 

In the end it comes to the question, Why should any- 
thing exist? Why should there be any earth, any sky, 
sun or moon? We do not know. We can see no reason 
for the existence of even elemental force. It is as it is, 
but the real purpose of it no man can even conjecture. 
If all that now is throughout the universe were to pass 
away and leave mere vacuity — no matter, no force, no 
ether — what would be the harm? There being then 
nothing to be affected there could be no consequential 
results. Now if we can see no reason intelligible to 
our minds for the existence of anything at all, no 
reason why all that exists should not be blotted out 
and disappear, it is not strange that we cannot under- 
stand why any certain part of the whole is as it is, 
for we have then no knowledge of the true relation of 
that part to the whole, and without such knowledge 
it would be impossible clearly to see the reason for the 
peculiar character of the part. 



THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 297 

Man is therefore forced to admit that he cannot 
discover why anything should exist at all or why, if 
it must exist, it should have one mode of existence 
rather than another. He can only observe what is 
within the range of his physical, mental and spiritual 
vision and try to interpret it all into an harmonious 
and orderly system, but this much he apparently must 
do, for in all ages he has been trying to do it. 

If, however, there be any purpose, it must be in 
line with all observed facts. In physics and chemistry 
we observe and study the facts and at last we see what 
we call the law of certain things. Whatever always 
happens under given conditions we say is the disclosure 
of a law and this is all man ever knows about such a 
law. That it is so he knows as a fact, but why it is 
so, or how it is so, he does not know nor ever will. 
Nature has its own way of compelling attention. A 
man needs to eat food and he becomes hungry and 
loses interest in all else except in what we say figura- 
tively that nature then wants him to do. He needs 
water and becomes thirsty, all else being subordinated 
to that imperious need. That all life should maintain 
itself is taken care of so elaborately by nature that we 
may safely say that it is one of the primal laws of the 
universe. 

"Whenever we discover what we thus call a law of 
the universe we may say that it discloses the divine 
will and purpose, assuming that there is one. Now 



298 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

we can hardly conceive the universe as without pur- 
pose or that it is not dominated by a will and so we 
look at the facts and, when we see how certain things 
always do operate, we may say that such is intended 
and that it signifies the divine purpose. We do not, 
in a strict sense, know that there is any purpose, but 
we can hardly help using the language, for it is quite 
impossible to feel that agencies so cleverly calculated 
to produce a result were not intended to do it. We 
feel that somehow, in a way not comprehensible, nature 
is sentient with purpose and will, that such is a part 
of the very essence of all cosmic force. How it operates 
or can in any way operate, it will be always impossible 
to see or to say. The plain fact is that we do not know 
and cannot know the mode of such being or the way 
in which such universal force operates and exists. It 
is best to be honest and say so. Man is safest when 
he clings to the facts within his capacity, not, of course, 
rejecting the visions of his deeper inner consciousness, 
but being very cautious how he argues from such 
premises. He may feel something that he knows he 
cannot explain or express. He will not, however, do 
violence to truth and call it knowledge, but he will 
recognize that it may point towards facts which tran- 
scend all his capacity for knowledge. 

He may rest secure in the idea that what he needs 
to know is certainly within his capacity; that nature 
does not leave any work unfinished or incomplete. 



THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 299 

What always has been always will be. It is a moral 
universe under the strict dominion of law from first 
to last. Man must learn this law, which means that 
he must study and interpret the facts honestly and 
fearlessly. In this quest the ultimate degree of honesty 
is demanded, and it will result in the highest possible 
degree of fight. 

The true riddle of existence is wholly connected 
with man's existence and largely rests on the enormous 
disparity of social conditions that has always and 
everywhere been apparent. It is because we see the 
poverty and misery of the masses of men ; the blindness 
and perversity, the ignorance and seemingly incurable 
selfishness; the ascendancy of the animal nature in 
a being capable of such spiritual exaltation. The two 
extremes are apparently irreconcilable. It is difficult 
to regard men as having unity of nature, some of whom 
are coarse, contemptible, degi'aded and repulsive, while 
others are refined, gloriously intelligent, heroically 
unselfish and invincibly attractive. We could under- 
stand man as purely animal — as low, brutal and sen- 
sual — if only all were such. We could understand 
man as intellectual, refined, capable and happy, if all 
men were such. The riddle fies in the fact that men 
are seen in both phases, and this has persisted so long 
and been so universaUy true that many have said that 
it was inescapable, being rooted in the very nature 
of things. The Christian spirit denies this and asserts 



300 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

that the brute in man can be entirely conquered by- 
suitable environment, by proper education, by rational 
development. Thus Christianity, when truly appre- 
hended, comes as the solution of the riddle and summons 
all men to cooperate and demonstrate its validity. 

The wonderful growth of knowledge; the discovery 
of man's power to control and utilize natural forces, 
to press into his service the very elementary laws of 
the universe; the consequent improvement in methods 
of production and distribution; the lessened appre- 
hension and dread of so-called supernatural powers 
as capricious and incalculable; the obvious and wide- 
spread stimulus reaching all classes; the undaunted 
courage leading society to attack problems hitherto 
deemed insoluble; the deepened faith in our ability to 
solve these problems — all this has led and is leading 
us to believe it reasonable to predict a coming day when 
life, even for the masses, will be more than a struggle 
for existence, more than a contest for food. As this 
comes to be more and more appreciably compassed 
by the unfolding of modern life, men come more and 
more to believe that the world as it is at present is 
good; that the future is to be better; that progi*ess 
is the true order of the world and that it is really a 
privilege to have a part in the great movement. This 
diminishes the feeling that life is a riddle in proportion 
as it comes to be regarded as having some true value 
for all grades of men. 



THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 301 

Here Christianity should come with its inspiring 
and hopeful explication of the problem; with its message 
of encouragement; with its assertion that the source 
of all that is seriously worth while is God; that the 
expanding social consciousness, the aspiring human 
soul, the intellectual activity, the yearning for the 
uplifting of all men and the amelioration of all social 
conditions, is a true revelation of God and indicates 
the divine purpose; that the extraordinary impulses, 
throbbing through all human living, do but reveal 
the divine force within us causing and urging on the 
development we behold. 

Nature, as we regard it at any one time, is but a 
temporary phase of a process marked by incessant 
changes, for the cosmos is not a permanent and 
imalterable entity but rather a shifting, ever-changing 
process of becoming. All is ceaselessly swept forward 
under an impulse that causes never-ending changes. 
But, however it appears to the casual onlooker, to 
the eye of intelligence and reflection the changes are 
not blind and aimless but rational and orderly. It 
is not a purposeless drifting but a rational evolution. 
We may dimly discern evidence of this within the limited 
field of our conscious observation and this is the basis 
for our faith in the validity of a belief in universal 
progress towards some rational end. But, while we 
may discern evolution as the essential law of the cosmos, 
we cannot penetrate behind or beyond this. We feel, 



302 THE GEEEK GOSPEL. 

indeed, that we are compelled to recognize identity 
accompanied by change as characteristic of the whole 
natural world. Now the only form of identity that 
is thus accompanied, of which we have any direct and 
true knowledge, is personality. I constantly change 
and yet I am conscious of my identity. Therefore the 
essential principle of the cosmos can, by me, only be 
apprehended as analogous to what I call personality — 
as an immanent, self-revealing, self -manifesting, self- 
realizing God. Without such a supposition all phe- 
nomena remain inexplicable while, if that be accepted, 
all nature is seen to be the working out of a psychical 
principle which is forever realizing itself in countless 
diverse forms — a psychical progress ever seeking as 
its end the more perfect self-realization of the cosmic 
force. 

The historical student sees evidence enough to justify 
his belief that ''through the ages an increasing purpose 
runs." Each lower stage seems to lead to a higher 
which could not have existed without it. Ever the old 
order seems to be yielding place to the new, but always, 
underneath the evanescent, restless movement there 
seems to be purpose; underneath all the changes, 
diversity and variety there seems to be a harmony and 
underlying bond of unity. In man's life continual 
pressing forward seems to be the law of his being. As 
conscious personalities we feel that progressive devel- 
opment is our highest duty, the fulfilment in us of 



THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 303 

the divine purpose. We are ever to seek to surpass 
the best that is behind us and to press on in hope and 
confident assurance that there are greater and better 
possibihties before us and it is thus that we cooperate 
with God. We must abandon that which is outworn, 
must throw off the shell we have outgrown and con- 
stantly struggle onward and upward. 

Though the history of the world be so full of evil, 
misery and oppression, attended by so much lamenta- 
tion, mourning and woe; though man's life be largely 
disappointment and defeat; though pain be suffered 
to the point of anguish; though dreary superstition 
be so persistent as to seem ineradicable from the 
minds of our fellow-men; though, in a word, the world, 
as we see it in our limited way, seem to contravene 
any idea of an underlying rational purpose — despite 
all this we must still believe that there is a divine 
purpose and that it is rational. We must love and try 
to reach what seems to us to be highest and best; must 
let our whole life rest on faith that what our conscious- 
ness certifies as best is really so; must act as if what 
we did counted for something; as if our earnest effort 
at self-expression were not wasted and would not be 
''cast as mbbish to the void." We must be loyal 
and steadfast in this faith despite the absence of strict 
and logical proof; must treat it as if it were a reality; 
as if our own personality were in some way needed 
for the completeness of the cosmic scheme. Then, 



304 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

even if we utterly perish, we shall do so with serenity 
and dignity. We must at least believe that to develop 
our faculties, to lead a life that is pure and sane, to 
secure and realize in a sensible way the fulness and 
richness of our present environment, is to prepare 
effectively for all other worlds and is a wise course to 
pursue whether there are such other worlds or not. 
We must see that if at the end of this life we utterly 
pass away as individuals, it is because we ought to 
do so since it serves the divine purpose. The question 
of purpose or no purpose in the universe does not hinge 
on the question of man's survival as an individual 
after death. We may serve the cosmic purpose even 
if we perish and our highest joy may still flow from 
such service despite failure to survive. We must 
believe that the power that has brought us thus far 
can be forever trusted and, feeling this, we may roll 
all thought and responsibility for the future from our 
own selves, realizing that our present duty to seize 
present opportunities is enough to employ all our 
capacity and that we may have the joy of present 
development whatever is to happen. It seems clear 
that a man who does not develop himself because 
he fears that he will not survive does not deserve to 
survive. He is a weakling, without faith in the divine 
purpose unless it coincides with his personal preferences. 
He is not willing to serve God because of the ends 
gained by the present service, but demands a so-called 



THE RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE. 305 

reward, the propriety and possibility of which he is 
not fitted to judge or even to understand. In very 
truth the work of the developed man, with his splendid 
capacity, his profound insight, his unwearied industry 
in working out the serious purpose of his life, discloses 
and manifests the Real Presence, the divine energy 
immanent within him. He begins in mystery; he 
lives surrounded by mystery and mysteriously he con- 
cludes his work and passes on. In it all he symbolizes 
the vaster life of the whole. In his feeble way he 
incarnates the Eternal Reason, in which he has lived, 
by whose pressure he has moved, to which has been 
due all the mystery of his being. Living or dead he 
is under the same divine law, and this law is right and 
wise whatever be his personal destiny under it. 

But, whatever may be our true and final relation 
to the universe, it is certainly a great privilege to have 
witnessed, for even a brief lifetime, the majestic spec- 
tacle of nature; to have even pondered the riddle of 
existence and, in our effort to solve it, to have reached 
and grasped a conception of the progressive develop- 
ment of the human race; to have studied the succes- 
sive generations through the long, historic past, each 
fuller of true humanity than the one that went before; 
to have beheld the motley throng of mortal beings, 
each with spiritual possibilities hidden within him, 
each realizing himself under the varying conditions 



306 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

of his individual environment and all cooperating to 
produce the mysterious life called the history of man, 
— a mighty, seemingly endless procession of mortals 
moving, with ever-shifting, ever-fluctuating fortunes, 
through time towards a possible immortality; now 
rising, now falling; now exalted, now abased; now 
triumphant, now crushed; ever struggling to live, 
yet ever succumbing to death; ever standing as a part 
of nature, yet ever striving to rise above it; with the 
eternal law written on the heart, yet with passions and 
appetites that antagonize it, — an organism through 
which God does indeed speak, yet constantly denying 
God. It is truly a riddle but it is fascinating, overpower- 
ing and when seen in its broader and higher aspects, 
wonderful and even glorious in its impressiveness. 



II. 

THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 

Assuming that there is a divine purpose, it is clear 
that, so far as man is concerned, it means that he shall 
find purpose enough in his own growth and development 
within his own sphere. Man is to give his limited 
capacity to a limited task, which is merely to live con- 
formably to the laws of his own being. This by analogy 
is the divine purpose, for it is due to this principle that 
the whole universe, outside of man, swings on its eternal 
course in exact obedience in all its parts to law. Man, 
so far as we can see, alone violates this principle and, 
as a consequence, his Ufe is the only part of the 
universe marked by what we call evil, the only status 
in which there is misery, sorrow and degradation. 
Until man obeys the law he must and will suffer. 

If we observe and study the history of the human 
element of the race, we always find it marked by one 
dominant desire and purpose, and that is the uplifting 
of all the rest of the race. In countless ways humanity 
devotes itself to the service of man and this has always 
aimed at his regeneration, redemption, salvation from 
what is low and bad. To plead, to argue, to explain; 



308 THE GREEK GOSPEL 

to show that the true, the beautiful and the virtuous 
is the best; to inspire, stimulate and console; to go 
out to the unfortunate men in pity and sympathy — 
all this has always and everywhere been the expression 
of the human spirit, and this is therefore the law and 
indicates the divine will and purpose. 

To lead man into obedience to the law of his being 
is the mission of humanity. It is a unique duty, for 
no living being outside of humanity has such a peculiar 
task. In the hands of a minority rests the regenera- 
tion of the majority. Why it is so, no man can say 
or ever will say, but the divine purpose, reflected in 
the consciousness of all the best men of all the ages, 
is that humanity must try to save the rest of the race. 
Why a mere pitiful minority should have such a 
stupendous task on its shoulders as is involved in the 
redemption of such an overwhelming majority is simply 
inconceivable, but we cannot help seeing as a fact that 
humanity is and always has been, so to speak, instinc- 
tively conscious of such a task and has applied to it 
a marvelous degree of patient, persistent and heroic 
effort. All the best and most capable men of the race 
are working at some part of this problem, some con- 
sciously and some unconsciously, some blindly and 
some intelligently, but all are in some way devoting 
their time, thought and energy to some detail of this 
stupendous task. Never at any preceding period was 
so much done or attempted as at the present day. 



THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 309 

So far as there is any explanation it seems to be 
this. Humanity acts, and always has acted, under 
pressure of the simple instinct of self-preservation. 
This instinct seems to operate universally in all things 
from the least to the greatest. The human minority 
has always found itself imperiled by an hostile and 
aggressive majority. To save itself it had to meet 
and conquer or at least hold in check this, its natural 
enemy. It could not rely on mere physical force, for 
it did not possess as much of this as did its foe. It 
could only rule by causing divisions in its enemy 
and securing an alliance with at least a part. After 
centuries and even ages of experience the conclusion 
was forced on the human minority that in order to reach 
any permanent results it must conquer by the applica- 
tion of its own principles, by the wider diffusion of the 
human element itself, by raising in some way or in 
some degree this great alien mass up to the distinc- 
tively human plane. 

This meant no less than the moral renovation of 
the w^orld. Ignorance imperils intelligence; filth and 
disease in the slums endanger life in the palace and 
cloisters; the mob in the street destroys all the peace 
and tranquillity of domestic life. Let things alone and 
it is clear that humanity would be submerged and the 
work of ages be imdone. One series of centuries like 
the ^'dark ages" was enough. One French Revolu- 
tion was sufficient. Hence the ceaseless effort to edu- 



310 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

cate, to rouse any dormant germ of thought in this 
great mass into true activity, to guide it aright, to 
mitigate man's burdens and bring about a better popu- 
lar environment fit to be the basis of a higher hfe. 

The human element stands, indeed, and must ever 
increasingly do so, for three ideas, upon the acceptance 
and realization of which on a large scale depends the 
final success of the movement for the regeneration of 
the world. All past history discloses the steady and 
persistent diffusion and acceptance of these ideas. They 
are: 

First, The placing of a high valuation upon each 
individual, the exaltation of the significance of the 
social unit, the perception of his absolute right to 
fair, just and considerate treatment by the collective 
whole. It is essential that all this should be asserted 
and held in a sane and sensible way, avoiding all 
sentimentality and mere emotionalism, which are mis- 
chievous and dangerous. It is also essential that we 
should never idealize or exalt individual independence 
as such but rather emphasize and have as our ideal 
the reciprocal interdependence of man upon man, craft 
upon craft, class upon class, nation upon nation, blend- 
ing or fusing the old collectivism and crude individu- 
alism into a new and helpful solidarity free from the 
defects of both extremes. If society owes a duty to 
the individual, so he owes a similar and coextensive 
duty to society. These duties are correlative and 



THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 311 

cannot effectively exist apart. Upon entire sanity 
in regard to this conception rests all true and perma- 
nent success. 

Second. That the standard of living must be com- 
patible with this valuation of the individual and that 
this is the crux of the whole problem. Seeing the ideal 
of what the man's Hfe can be and ought to be must 
inevitably create discontent with anything less or 
lower and ought to lead men to combine for such 
improvement of conditions as may make the realization 
of the ideal at least possible in some appreciable de- 
gree. It is certain that this is a problem of the utmost 
complexity and difficulty; that it must take time 
grievously long; must involve countless sacrifices, 
the most heroic exertions, the utmost wisdom and 
tact, and then it must be attended by every form and 
degree of discouragement and sense of defeat. 

Third. That men, who already enjoy a scale of living 
fitted for their development, must so use their advan- 
tages as ever to aim at rendering the same possible 
for those who are now not so favored; that the general 
welfare and safety requires this and that it must be 
regarded as an imperative duty. The spread of the 
human ideal inevitably causes discontent with all 
that is low and unworthy. This discontent must 
naturally flow from the revelation of the ideal and upon 
appeasing and overcoming it, upon arousing hope 
and faith in and for a possible realization of the ideal 



312 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

thus created, rests the future progress, if not the future 
safety, of society. Humanity cannot arouse ambitions 
and aspirations without being obUged, for its own 
safety, to realize and satisfy them. 

It cannot forever maintain its ideal as realizable 
by a mere minority, for it will then be crushed by 
the ever-awakening mind of the multitude. The very 
instinct of self-preservation must always appeal to 
the human element as a true and adequate reason 
why it must recognize its divine mission. In this way 
humanity is and ever will be subtly urged and forced 
into the discharge of its high functions. Progressive 
social amelioration becomes a stern necessity which, 
if disregarded, precipitates a cataclysm or flooding 
disaster and this teaches and enforces the lesson and 
administers a rebuke not to be forgotten for a century. 
It follows, therefore, that, whatever may be the freedom 
of the individual from responsibility as to his equals 
or superiors, he owes a positive duty to all below him 
in the social scale, and his discharge of this duty is 
the evidence of his worth and value as a citizen. To 
sympathize with the afflicted; to reheve the distressed; 
to modify and soften the existing inequalities, even 
though he is in no way or degree the cause of them; 
to encourage the hopeless; to overcome by kindness 
the social discontent, however unreasonable it may be, 
and however it may be due to personal faults and even 
sins of the discontented ; to be patient and long-suffering 



THE MISSION OF HUMANITY. 313 

with these defective social units and ever to seek to 
remedy the deficiencies — all this is the absolute duty 
of the true human. 

We are coming to see more and more clearly that 
the class having wealth must take care of the poor and 
lift them up as a condition of permanently enjoying 
its own wealth ; that the class with capacity must help 
the incapables to carry their burdens as a condition 
necessary to enjoying the fruits of capacity at all; 
that the bright must think for the stupid; that the 
clean must wash the feet of the dirty; that the sane 
must guard and care for the insane ; that love must go 
forth and encounter hate; that kindness, mercy and 
compassion must receive the ill reward of cruelty and 
sheer brutality. All this paradox has been forced on 
humanity by the mere instinct of self-preservation, 
but the persistent effort growing out of it has neces- 
sarily developed humanity itself. The constant sense 
of peril, the need of securing alHes, — this has led to the 
wider diffusion of the human type. 

Even vulgar men are coming to see and realize as 
never before the superiority of the human type. The 
gifts of science, the advance in medicine and surgery, 
the relief of pain, the mitigation of the burden of all 
life comes so clearly from what is best and truest that 
few can fail to appreciate it. Further, we begin to 
perceive that what we need is not so much medieval 
saints as good sterling men of capacity, ready to deal 



314 THE GREEK GOSPEL. 

with these great problems in the light of a sanctified 
common sense. Man really wants to be better and 
first he wants better surroundings in which to make 
his home, better food and clothes, more leisure and 
then such training as will render the leisure a blessing 
and not, as it too often has been, a curse. Whoever 
will bring man to this state, or will show that he is 
sincerely working for such result, will at last conquer 
the brute in his nature and lead him to at least some 
degree of sanity and intelligence. 

'fhis is the true meaning of regeneration and salva- 
tion and this is the way it will come, if indeed it ever 
does. This is the mission of humanity. Whoever is 
doing any part of this noble work is, whether he realizes 
it or not, a part of the divine Christus. He is truly 
Son of Man, for he is human that has evolved from 
man; and he is also Son of God, for in him there is a 
portion of the cosmic force called spirit. He is truly 
in kinship with the Eternal Reason, with the God 
who is forever immanent and forever transcendent. 



THE GREEK GOSPEL 

An Interpretation of the 
Coming Faith 

By 
EDWARD P. USHER, A.M., LL.B. 



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